


Unity of Opposites

by KendylGirl



Series: Dreams of Reality [3]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Commitment, Conflict, Established Relationship, Father Figures, Happy Ending, Insecure Oliver, Internal Conflict, Jealousy, Love, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, POV Oliver, Past Relationship(s), True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-02 13:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14546031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: Seven years have passed since Oliver first went to Italy; now, he's decided to make some changes.  Will Elio agree?  They will find some unexpected stumbling blocks on their way to true happiness.





	1. The Question

**Author's Note:**

> Putting this chapter together was very difficult, so I am desperately hoping that you find it worthy and quite nervous that you won't. Please have mercy on my poor heart and leave a comment to let me know what you think!
> 
> *This is a revised vision for this story. I've drastically altered my strategy for it; I'm seeing it in an entirely new light, so view it as a mere beginning to tougher times to come, before the happy ending that I would never, NEVER deny them. I hope you're willing to come along for the ride!*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After an encounter with his sister, Oliver comes to a realization about his life and his future.

Pauline agrees to meet me at a coffee shop a few blocks from campus.She is in town from Franklin Lakes to do some shopping, so at least it is not a terrible inconvenience.She sweeps in the door in a floor-length wool coat of a cerulean color that matches her eyes perfectly, her light hair falling in ringlets across her shoulders.The years have only made her more stunning.When she sees me, I am sure a genuine smile actually crosses her face before being swallowed by the remote expression that she’d cultivated from years of studying our mother while the latter had navigated a spectrum of social conundrums as my father’s champion and somehow had managed to remain pristine and untouched above them all.

We haven’t seen each other in five years.I send her a card on her birthday each year; she sent me flowers after my new book was published and was reviewed favorably by the _Times._ We never spoke on the phone.There was nothing to say.

She removes her red leather gloves one finger at a time and perches carefully on the wooden chair opposite me, crossing one long leg over the other.She does not take off her coat.Her eyes study me in increments.I incline my head toward my cappuccino.“Want something to drink?”

Her lips purse.“No, thank you.I can’t stay long.I’m meeting Charlie soon for dinner with clients.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Fine,” she nods curtly.“Busy.Very busy.He just made partner.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” 

She looks down at her hands and clears her throat.I wonder if she is warring with herself, her impeccable conversational etiquette attempting to displace her millstone of distaste.I decide to spare her the agony of choosing for herself.“We’re good, too.Elio got his doctorate from Juilliard in December, and he will finish his concert series soon.He’s taken an artist-in-residence at Eastman next year.”

Her neck straightens.“Oh?”An eyebrow lifts slightly.“All the way over in Rochester?”

I take a sip of my drink to cover my smirk.“Yes.Should be a nice change of pace for us.”

“Us?”

“I’m taking a research sabbatical to go with him.”

She looks away.“How nice.”

An awkward silence descends.She fusses in her clutch for a handkerchief to dab her nose, then checks a compact mirror to verify her makeup is still impeccable.It makes me think of the incident when I was eight and she was twelve, and Pauline had vowed to never speak to me again because I had snuck into her drawer and took the lipstick that she’d purchased in secret at the drugstore (Steamy Scarlet, a devilish and vibrant hue).My parents had been adamant that she not wear any such thing until high school lest she emulate the cheap town girls who would amount to nothing.I, on a perverse whim, had melted the whole tube all over the lightbulb of her desk lamp; I don’t even know why I did it—just for the thrill of watching it liquify, I suppose—and she had given me a look that made me wither.It wasn’t her anger that had done it; she hadn’t screamed and ranted.In fact, she hadn’t uttered a word.Worse, she had just looked at me, laden with sadness, betrayal.She had shut the door to her room quietly, locked it, and I was never allowed back in.

She had spoken to me eventually, of course, and I did go in and out of her room thousands of times more, but it was never the same after that.

_We_ were never the same.

She never again invited me to read with her in the window seat or let me sleep at the foot of her bed when I was upset; we never lay on our stomachs on her soft beige carpet and listened to an entire top-forty countdown on the radio while we did our homework.I had done wrong, and I would pay for it; I came to realize that there was no room for error with her, and in that respect, she had behaved exactly as my parents had so tenaciously inculcated.

Finally, she snaps her purse closed and looks up at me.“So you’re really going to keep doing this?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be so cavalier?What will this do to your career, to your standing in—“

“I’m a writer and an academic, Pauline, not a priest.”

“Have you even once thought of the family, how they have been affected?”

“Oh, I don’t know, have they even once thought of me?”My lips quirk with amusement.

She scowls and rolls her eyes to the ceiling.“I can’t believe…you know what this will do to…”She sighs.“You really could have been someone, Oliver, before…before all of this nonsense.I just don’t understand why you would throw your life away.”

I can feel my forehead crinkle.“He _is_ my life, Leen.He is everything about me that matters at all.” 

She leans forward, eyes blazing.“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she spits.“What does that even _mean_?”

My chest feels leaden.She really doesn’t know—nine years a wife, and she has no earthly idea what I am talking about.It is then that I got it.After all of these years, I realized finally why that stupid tube of lipstick had mattered so much to her.Cleaning up my mess had let my parents in on her secret—not that she’d made an illicit purchase, but that she had the potential to be her own person, that she was an artist, as much a dreamer as their son.And where there was one secret, there were bound to be others, other indulgences and acts of self-discovery.My mother took extra care to ensure that was never the case, that her perfect daughter remained exactly that way.Pauline’s small rebellion had been crushed, the dim chance she’d had to color outside the lines, to toy with the concept of identity, and it had been all thanks to me.And how did I compensate her loss?I permitted myself to travel the world, move to the city, live and love as I chose; she was left to cocktail parties and diamond chokers and a finely appointed, 20,000 square-foot cage adrift on five fabulous acres.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, Pauline still believed she was cleaning up my messes and paying the price for my transgressions.I feel a surge of desolation.It is as if she’d been dealt a mortal blow all those years ago, and though it will take a lifetime for her to bleed out, she is already dead.Whoever she would have been in that parallel life, one that could have involved passion and joy and illumination, that could have filled her soul to the very lip of its cup— _that_ sister was stillborn and buried in the garden, never to be spoken of again.

Before I met Elio, I often would say with conviction, “I know myself,”and I believed it sincerely.It was a flagrant lie.What I had known was how to _pretend_ to be me, how to instinctively resort to the image and deny the man.All along, it seemed the person I was most skilled at deceiving was myself.Control—that’s what I told myself that I had.I was deluded enough to think that I had the world mastered, that I was calling the shots in my own life when, in truth, I was in a coma that I’d passed off as peace instead of the living death that it was.

Pauline never had a chance.

I sag in my seat. “Oh, dear God, Pauline.”I gulp down a wave of nausea.“That’s—I—I’m sorry…I’m so, so _sorry_!” 

Her face blanks, and she sits back.Her surprise leaves her temporarily unguarded, and for just a moment, I see a glimmer of vulnerability there, a mute recognition that something had eluded her but she could not quite grasp what it was, like a memory that felt too much like a dream to have once been real.Then, the mask of ice returns, and the frost I was accustomed to falls between us.

When I get home that evening, Elio is standing over the kitchen counter, humming a melody I know well, one of his own creation, and pouring himself a glass of Chardonnay.He turns as I enter, and without missing a beat, passes me the glass, kisses my cheek, and lifts the messenger bag from my shoulder to put it on a nearby chair.“Hey, I _almost_ have the end of the second movement worked out the way I want it.I’ll play it for you when I’m done, see what you think.”

Simple gestures, performed dozens and dozens of times in various ways, between him and I.Just _us_.

I can’t move.I just stand in the doorway and stare at him in wonderment as he pads back to the bottle to pour another glass, picking up his tune at the exact spot he’d left off.I take a sip of the wine, then place it on the table and follow Elio to the kitchen.I hug him from behind, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist.His tune fades, and he turns inside my grasp and folds his arms up under mine so that his hands come up to grip my shoulder blades.I lay my cheek on his head and close my eyes.“Don’t ever leave me, Elio.”

“Not going anywhere tonight,” he chuckles.

“Not ever. _Please_.”

Elio stills.“You all right?”His voice is slightly muffled by my shirt.

I don’t answer right away, not until I’m sure that the hot rush of tears building in me will not spill out and run down my cheeks “Yeah, I’m fine.”I drop my head into the crux of his neck.“Just glad to be home.”

We stay that way a long time, until I feel able to loosen my grip, and as he starts to pull away, as I kiss his soft lips, I decide what I must to do.It settles in my mind, allowing me to step back calmly and finally let him go.

 

* * *

 

We ascend, twisting up the mountain in the thin slate gray of pre-dawn.The grinding motion of the road mirrors the churning of my gut, wound in knots since we’d arrived last night.I don’t realize how tightly I’m gripping the steering wheel until I pry one clammy hand loose to lay on Elio’s shoulder.His head rests heavily in my lap; soft snores snuffle from him and flutter the hair that’s fallen over his cheek.  He drools a bit on my thigh.

I sneak a glance at my watch, then press harder on the accelerator.Only forty-three minutes left.Forty-three minutes.Four months to plan, eight hours to drive, and (if I’m honest) three very arduous, tumultuous decades to believe even possible.And it’s forty-three minutes away.

Forty-two.

_Oh, God_.

As we near the summit, I am swarmed with memories of kissing him on the street in Rome.I remember that we’d staggered down an alley, drunk on the grappa, drunk on the whole experience, the absolute headiness of the unadulterated freedom.He’d dropped back, dragging at me because our arms were entwined, and I stared at him and stumbled, backing up against the stone of the building.His mouth was open.I looked at his tongue hiding behind his upper teeth, his reddened lips, slightly wet from the water he’d slurped from the fountain. 

Then, I had looked up at his eyes, and what I saw there nearly killed me.It was surrender.Complete surrender.And I was terrified—I was thoroughly entranced and hotly aroused and scared witless.Elio had dropped his last screen—his last tiny bit of self-protection, right there in the middle of the street—and had invited me in.I was going to leave.I was going to get on a train and break his heart and quite possibly never return.Elio knew it, and so did I.But he opened himself to me anyway, an act of daring that I feared I could never match. 

I fell into him then, pinned there between the wall and his warm body, and captured his mouth, licked into it, my fingers wrapped around his skull. _Here.I give up.Take what you want._ I wanted him to devour me, to take me into himself and remake me into someone else, someone worthy of the beautiful simplicity of what he had offered me, of _him_.I never wanted him to stop looking at me that way.It would kill me if he did, I knew.If that gaze were ever rescinded, if it were offered to someone else instead, then the Oliver that I had been—the Oliver that I was achingly desperate to be—would cease to exist.

He was braver than me, Elio was.He still is.He is ever under the bizarre impression that he is odd and tremulous and rushing to catch up with the world.I don’t know how to break him of this.Perhaps I never will.

I pull into a spot in a wide oval parking area surrounding a small supply station and cut the engine.I give Elio’s shoulder a gentle shake.“Hey, sleepyhead.We’re here.Come on, time to go.”

He groans, “I better get some blueberry pancakes out of this,” and sits up, pulling his hair to the left and out of his eyes with a few slides of his right hand.He smooths the jean jacket he’d thrown on in the dark over plaid shorts and a white t-shirt of mine.

I press my lips together to try not to give anything away, though if he were more awake, he’d surely see my tremoring hand and the fat bead of sweat crawling down the back of my neck despite the chill air.“Don’t worry.You’ll be well compensated.”I get out and grab two blankets from the back seat.I have started to wander off toward the rocks before I realize I’ve left the key in the ignition and my door wide open. _Get it together, idiot._ I flash a wan smile at Elio’s furrowed brow and chuckle lightly.“Details, details…”

He follows me slowly over the lip of the road and into the sparse, gravelly underbrush.I lead him across one of the giant slabs of granite laid out like a Roman road to the edge, spotted in the orange and green and silver lichens that cling to it.Perched there, at last, he seems to have finally awakened.“Whoa.”He stops and swivels his head around.“This is so amazing!”

I stare at his profile.“It sure is.”

Cadillac Mountain lords over Acadia, the pinnacle of Mount Desert Island.The full scope of the surrounding hills and isles and ocean water is not even clear in the blue-purple light, and it is still breathtaking.We’d wandered around Bar Harbor last evening, the tiny town easily accessible from the small weekend rental we had by the shore.I smile to myself, thinking again of our time trekking around the arc of the Mediterranean, how similar this area felt to where we had been those two glorious weeks.What seems as if it should be a different world really proves that ours is a smaller planet than what most would like to believe.

We amble over the boulders on the eastern side and lay out one of the blankets on a flat expanse of rock.The other we throw over our shoulders and sit pressed against one another, legs dangling, ankles crossing.

“So when does the show start?”

“About twenty minutes.”

He nods, taking a deep breath of the cool, fragrant air.His eyes flare viridescent as they wander aimless along the brightening horizon.His shoulder shifts, and his arm falls behind me.He strokes down my back without even seeming to realize that he is, expression amiably blank as he watches a sea bird float along a convection below us.Then, his hand eases under my shirt, and his palm presses flat against my lower back.It’s just a warm, reassuring pressure, but I am on fire. 

From the beginning, I never desired Elio.That verb is pathetic.

Desire is like a sneeze—it overwhelms you and is gone in seconds.Desire has no end game; it just ends.It dies.It fades away and is forgotten, leaving you unaffected by its presence and unperturbed by its absence.

No.

From the beginning, I _absorbed_ Elio.

He _ravaged_ me.

He overwhelmed the person I had been before coming to Italy, broke me down and remade the matrix of who I am.I would never recover from that, and though I had tried to resist it, to deny and distract myself, there was no longer an Oliver to retreat to that did not contain an Elio.

“Elio, do you know what today is?”

He squints.“Um, Saturday?”

I roll my eyes.“The date, prodigy.What’s the date today?”

His head turns toward me.“Is it—“

“Yes, it is.”

His smile spreads to my lips, and he dips his head to kiss me.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?We met seven years ago today—I added it up while I drove up here.”

He studies my face.“No, you didn’t.”

I bite my lip and feel a blush creep up my neck.“You’re right.I’ve always known.”I turn my face toward the water.“Do you realize that means that you are as old now as I was then?”

“Damn, I’m such an _old man_ , then,” he gasps, flopping his chin to his chest with devastation.

I elbow him, and he giggles.I let the silliness fade and steady my breathing, watching a lone sailboat inch toward the blossoming emergence of deep orange.

“I’m no biologist,” I begin quietly, “but from what understand, the cells in our bodies are extinguished and reborn constantly.”I can feel Elio shift to look at me, but I can’t meet his eyes.Not yet.“In fact, in this perpetual process of life and death, I’ve heard that every cell in our bodies will have regenerated over the course of seven years.”I glance at him, catching just enough of the deep green in his irises to make my heart skip.“It may be merely a myth, but taken literally, that would mean I am a completely new man now than before we met.” 

Elio doesn’t say anything.He slides his hand onto my thigh, massages it lightly, and waits.

“What philosophy has taught me, though, is that this kind of flux is endemic to life.” My voice is barely a muttering because if I know that if I try to push it higher, it will crack and run dry.“Heraclitus indicates that the only way for a river to stay the same, the only way for it to survive, is to change.And we must do the same, Elio.We have to change, too.”

In my peripheral vision, I see his eyebrows gather together.His hand on my leg goes slack and pulls away.“What…how?How do we have to change?What does that mean?”

I clear my throat, eyes still glued to the edge of the world.“Did you know that, at this time of year, Cadillac Mountain is the first spot in the United States to see the sunrise?It is the first place where night changes to day, the very first place where the darkness is overwhelmed.So I wanted to be _here_ to…to tell…well, to a-ask you…to ask you…something.”

My heart is thudding so hard I can actually see my shirt flipping against its pressure.I swallow thickly, my throat full of sand.I force myself to turn towards him and look fully at his face.His nostrils are flared, his mouth ajar, brows hovering like storm clouds in the path of his gaze. _He’s afraid_.With twitchy hands, I reach out and grab both of his, wrap my fingers around their soft warmth and squeeze.I want it to be reassuring, but my fingers are clumsy rods of ice.“In the constellation of impossibilities that the universe offers, you are one that I never counted on.You are…a singularity, a thing of value infinite, the one from which all else becomes possible.”I take a deep breath.I finally raise my eyes and latch them directly onto his.“We have the stars, you and I, and that is given to us only once.I want to hold onto that, with everything I have, for at _least_ the rest of my life, so Elio?”His head tilts slightly.“Will you marry me?”

I remember vividly that night in B., our first night together.The Waiting. _God_.Waiting until midnight had nearly killed me.I had stayed away from the house as long as possible, just wandering the grounds of the estate, frayed nerves cinching my internal organs to a painful degree.By the time I returned to the villa, I was a sweaty, disheveled mess, and I remember walking past the living room as Elio’s elegant, sombre piano neared the climax of the song.I paused on my way to the stairs and looked in; the visitors, two older men in pastel suits, leaned into one another so naturally, an ease that can only come with trust and time and an unspoken familiarity.Then, I craned my neck just a bit to see Elio, hunched over the keys, his expression distant as he lost himself in the final notes.He seemed so far away that when I turned and walked up the steps, I had a sinking feeling that he would not follow, that midnight would come and go, and dawn would find me bent over the railing of the balcony outside my room, praying for the guts to push the last inch and fall off.

Somehow those interminable hours were nothing compared to the seconds that tick by as I sit here frozen and watch Elio, in silence, tilt his head a bit further, let his mouth hang a bit wider.And then, just when I am on the verge of spontaneous combustion, I hear the barest whisper brush past me like a wisp of sea breeze: “Are you serious?” 

The sun picks the moment his eyes swell with tears to poke a hole in the arc of the sky, making his eyes shine gold above his sudden, toothy smile.And he’s shaking.Is he laughing or crying?I can’t tell, and I want to comfort him, but I’m too afraid to move and break the spell.“Elio?”

“Yes.”

“You…do you mean—“

“Yes!”

“So—“

“ _Yes_ , Oliver.”  All at once, he is turned toward me, his legs linking around my waist, his hands on my neck and in my hair.“Yes, yes, yes, yes, _yes_!”

Relief turns me to rubber.I can only manage to slump forward and kiss him.“I…you…love you..really _love_ you…”I couldn’t stop kissing him long enough to get a coherent sentence out.It felt like Rome, that insistent need to be taken into him and cocooned by his warm and gentle heart.

I’m not sure how much time passes before we peek around the fringes of the blanket.“Well, look at that,” Elio murmurs, eyes scanning the horizon, “it’s a new day.”

“In every way.”

He leans his cheek against my shoulder.“But how are we going to do this, Oliver?” he muses.“It’s not like we can file legally.”

I huff a laugh.“You think that matters to me?”I kiss the top of his head.“We can’t do _that_ , no.Not yet, anyway.So we’ll do it _our_ way.It doesn’t have to have the approval of the United States of America.I only care that it has yours.”

He sits up abruptly.“Did you tell my parents about this?”

I shake my head slowly.“Didn’t want to jinx it.”

His face scrunches up.“What, you thought I’d say _no_?”  

I wince, and his jaw drops.He punches me lightly on the arm, then rubs over the spot.  "Why don't we go out there?  We've got some time in August, right?  Be great to see them, get some tranquility before Eastman?"

An involuntary smile pushes at my lips.  "I'd love that."

“Can I call you my fiancé?”There’s a gleam in his eyes, and the wind off the water fluffs his hair. 

I stare at him.He means it.I think I might faint.Is it possible for all of a person’s blood to fill his heart?Can a man’s skin really melt into a puddle?“You can if you want.”

He bites at his lip.“Can I get you a ring?”

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“That’s a yes.”

“Lucky guess.”

“We just rhymed.”

He laughs.

“Hungry?”

“Now _that_ is the second best question I’ve been asked today.”He hops down from the rock and starts to wad up the blanket.He hooks a thumb down the slope.“There are blueberry pancakes somewhere in a diner down there calling my name.Let’s go!”

I climb off the rock and follow his steps back up the trail.“Then what?Want to do some hiking or something?”

He stops so suddenly I almost ram into him.He whips around and grabs the front of my shirt in his fist, holding me mere inches from his face.His voice is a rumble.“What I want is for you to spend the entire afternoon naked and sweating and buried inside of me. I want your skin under my nails and my saliva coating every opening in your body.I want to taste you until your toes to curl and you think you’re going to pass out.I want you to be on the verge of insanity and begging— _pleading_ —for mercy.I want your tongue to be so bruised and exhausted that it can barely form the sounds I want to hear—the only ones that I will want to hear before I die—and that’s you calling me by your name.”

_Holy shit_.I am panting.   I almost sink to the ground.  My mouth waters, and I am certain it is not the only part of me leaking uncontrollably.

Elio smiles innocently and turns to jog back to the car. 

I fumble after him on the legs of a foal.He holds up his hand, so I toss him the keys.“You know the way?”

He pauses.”The road up and down is one and the same.” _Heraclitus_.

“How are you even real?”

A shrug.A wink.

“Fair warning:I’m getting blueberry coffee.And you’re having some.”

“Gross.”

“You’ll try it, and you’ll like it.”

“You sound awfully confident.”

“Damn right, Perlman.”

“And what makes you think you can get away with that?”

I turn to the open window and look up into the endless blue.“Because he said yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acadia National Park in Maine is absolutely gorgeous, and the town of Bar Harbor is everything you'd expect in a seaside town. Blueberries are EVERYWHERE, and everything there made with them is delicious, including the coffee!
> 
> Yes, I know that the seven-year cell thing is, in fact, a myth, but it just fit so well with Oliver's plans, I had to include it anyway!
> 
> I watched the film several times before I even noticed that Oliver appears in the background briefly as Elio plays for "Sonny and Cher." Once I saw that and the turbulent look on his face, I knew I had to make use of it.
> 
> According to the musician friends I polled, The Eastman School of Music where Elio is going to go as the artist in residence is one of the most prestigious in the country.
> 
> Elio's answer here is meant to be a call back to Oliver's response at the end of "The Path of Water." The next chapters will eventually find their way back to where that work leaves off.


	2. They Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As planned, Oliver and Elio return to Italy in August to visit the Perlmans in the wake of their big news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent a lot of time studying the various facial expressions of Mr. Chalamet in the film version. He was my inspiration here.

“Welcome home, boys.”Samuel peeks at our faces through the rearview mirror, and Annella turns to beam at us.

As we wind down the tree-lined road to the villa, I feel the tension of fourteen hours of international travel ebb from my limbs.Elio, who’d been slumped next to me since we left the train station, finally rouses, and I watch his eyes focus and begin to sparkle.I try to imagine what it must be like for him, being away for so long.I’d only been here a handful of times over the last seven years, and already its subdued energy was a surreal balm to the chaos offered by the rest of the world, like a glorious secret garden of grass and stone.It is enchanted, and Elio had spent much of his life amongst its passages, filling its open spaces with his music and tucking his dreams into its private nooks.Returning must revive his spirit in a way that even I could not fully understand.

He glances at me, then clamps his lips together and cinches his mouth up to the side, as he always does when he is fighting to hide an obvious emotion.It is adorable, making him look ten years younger in an instant. _Irresistible_.I lean down to kiss his cheek and whisper in his ear, “Me, too.”

As I step out of the car, I am flooded by memories of doing so for the first time here, the nervous anticipation to meet the professor and his family, desperate to make a good enough impression that they would not immediately regret their decision to invite me when their pool of applicants had to have had far more promising prospects than a quirky philosophy nut piecing together a book few people were likely to read.I had rehearsed my greeting in my head the whole way from Crema, plotting witty remarks that might make me seem less the awkward bird and more the suave, confident American that most of them would assume me to be.

I smile and shake my head at my own naiveté.For all the poker bluffs I’d played in my life, all the money I’d raked across a table over top of the lousy pair I’d been holding in my hand, I was no match for the Perlmans.Instantly, the professor and his wife had seen through my every maneuver, called every one of my gambits, and patiently waited for me to catch up to the real stakes.They set a place for me at the table and poured me generous glasses of juice and smiled kindly when I at last found my seat.

And Elio?He made me fold my hand entirely by showing me that there were far more enticing things for my fingers to grip.

Once I’d dropped the game, I finally realized how tired my arms were of trying to hold all the cards, how tightly I’d had to clench to keep the deck fanned out in front of me, all the while pretending it read something other than it did.Attempting to conceal my attraction to Elio had taken every available ounce of energy and drained my reserves; when we at last relented to what had been building between us, I was left wide open and vulnerable to whatever he wished.That’s why when he’d wavered after our first night, overwhelmed by the intensity of it and struggling to get his footing, it devastated me as nothing had before.I can still feel a ghosting of the bitter residue from that morning, my eager smile shattering like thin glass as he shrugged me off and withdrew.I had scrambled to revive my swagger, but it had been pointless.Against Elio, with none of my usual preemptive guardedness in place, no active immune system to fight off the plague of fear, there had been simply no defense.

Samuel has our bags in each of his arms.“I can take these up for you, boys.Go ahead to the kitchen and get something to drink and relax.”

Elio leaps forward.“No, Papa, that’s all right.We’ve got it.”

“Yes, we can take care of it, really.”I follow his lead, taking my duffle and slinging it over my shoulder.“We’ll settle in and be down in a few minutes.”

The professor seems poised to insist when his wife lays a hand on his shoulder.“Let them handle their business, eh?You’ll throw your back out besides.Come and help me make a couple of plates.”

Samuel throws up his hands and says, “Lead on, then, my dear.”

The room’s been prepared for us with fresh linens and a bouquet of wildflowers on the desk.The adjoining doors are propped open so that the space becomes one large suite, as it was meant to have been all along.The twin bed frames have been tied together at the feet and a new large mattress rests upon them.I drop my bag next to the wardrobe and nod at the bed.“They thought of everything.”

Elio grins and carefully clicks the door closed.Without warning, he rushes at me and knocks me flat on the sunshine-colored bedspread.He quiets my surprised laugh by knotting his fist into my hair and wrenching my head to crush his lips to mine, swallowing the moan that follows when I open my mouth at the insistence his clever tongue, working his jaw in deep swipes.His vigor gradually eases, his knees tightening around my hips so he can pull back slightly, tasting in sweet pulls of his lips, hand relaxing to stroke my hair in slow sweeps until I’ve all but melted into the floor.

He hovers over me, face gorgeous and placid, his riotous hair tickling my cheeks.“There.Now it feels like home.”

“It’s so good to be here.”His shirt hangs loose, so I run my fingers up and down the soft skin of his stomach and chest.“We really should get back downstairs.Soon.Like now, perhaps.”

“Yeah?”He licks his lips.

“Stop.”I put my finger against his lips.“You know I can’t say no to you, so don’t force me to try,” I chastise him gently.

He kisses my finger and sits back.“Fine.”He slides to the edge and stands, then offers me a hand to hoist me up.“Let’s eat.”

We jostle against one another coming down the staircase, and I marvel at how the place never appears to change.Its threadbare elegance remains constant, the effortless style that emerges from a seemingly haphazard collection of art and fabric and statuesque furniture, stacks of books situated next to worn leather seats and mysterious artifacts from travels past situated on shelves and mantles.It is as eclectic and marvelous as the family itself, somewhere between a museum and a private island.

When we cross through the kitchen Mafalda enters from outside and squawks when she sees us.She drops the wooden bowl she’d been carrying and hugs him tightly, spluttering in Italian so fast that I cannot follow what she’s saying.Elio’s face is scrunched against her shoulder, and his replies filter out through one corner of his mouth.“Hi…yeah, I’m fine…uh-huh…I know…sure, ok…”She grabs his face and gives him a huge kiss on his mouth, then loosens one hand to drag my face down to her as well to give me a matching kiss.“I miei ragazzi…essere uccel di bosco in America…ridicolo…” She scoops up her bowl and stalks away, still muttering.

Elio and I exchange stupid grins and stumble out the back door to the table where Samuel and Annella wait for us, pouring glasses of sparking water with frozen berries as ice.There are plates all over the table, enough to feed a group twice this size, but Elio and I make a sizable dent—prosciutto-wrapped melon, my favorite variety of green olives, sausage and ciabatta, balls of fresh mozzarella, and some kind of shredded salad with a red wine vinegar topper.By the time I lick my fingers and sit back, I seriously consider that I may have to crawl up on a rock in the sun to digest my food, like a lizard in the desert.

Annella chuckles at the devastated table.She ruffles Elio’s hair and rises to pour more water in all of our glasses.While she works, Samuel pieces together a layered tier of mozzarella and roasted pepper and rolls it in a strip of prosciutto.“The perfect bite, amore mia” he says, winking at her, and she gives him a kiss on the cheek before angling forward so he can pop it in her mouth.

_So is that what it’s like?_ I muse. _Is_ _that what it’s like to be married to a Perlman for nearly three decades?_ Soft laughter and easy affection and having someone know exactly what you like so even small gestures are ones that fill your soul with light?I could see it, though.Already, I’m awed when Elio pours the last of the coffee for me and satisfies himself with chamomile tea, or when a new book shows up on my desk because I’d offhandedly mentioned a month before that I might like to read it.There is no doubt that Elio has learned from the best.

This makes me cringe internally, for my training could not have been more different.My parents worked as a unit of sorts, but their version of it was less yin and yang, more shovel and dirt.I learned that marriage meant a repression of wants, not the fulfillment of them.Your husband provided for himself, wrought what he believed was the perfect design for all, and you were to carry out his vision.You took notes so that you could serve; your input was not required.Keep the house neat, the suits pressed; show the world what it expected so that it would be happy with you, but a reciprocal emotion was not required. 

Being tied to another was a life sentence, not a life.

Annella cups Elio’s face.“Ah, pulcino, we’re so happy for you.”She reaches across and squeezes my hand.“Both of you.”

Samuel folds the newspaper he’d been reading.“We’re proud of you for going after what you want, what you deserve.”

“I’m not sure I deserve all of this.”The words come out of me before I realize I’ve said them aloud.Elio turns to look at me, head quirked inquisitively, and I open my mouth to add some sort of quip, something to try to play it off as a joke, but the false words choke me.All that emerges is a sputtering exhale.I look down at my lap to hide my blush.But Annella saves me.“Nonsense, Oliver, we all deserve happiness.That is what I see when I look at you—a man accepting the portion of that happiness that is his to own.”

I meet her gaze and nod gratefully.“Thank you, I…I guess I never thought…”Elio feels my discomfort and reaches under the table to give my leg a warm squeeze, and I am mortified to feel the tears rise from my throat, so I swallow them down quickly before they can appear in my eyes.“I never thought I’d get this much.”

I drain my water, and Elio bumps my arm.“Come on, let’s take a walk, stretch our legs.”He bends his neck to catch my eyes.“Before I have to roll you out of here.”He’s not sure if I remember.

_Of course I remember, Elio.I remember everything_.

I smirk and push back my chair to follow him around the house and down the drive.The sun is starting to descend majestically to the horizon, and the insects hum mechanically in the scorched air.Convections roll off the grass, so we wander through the shade of the trees, the orange light following us in fits and starts.I reach over for Elio’s hand, and he threads his fingers through mine tightly, as if he’s just been waiting for me to offer.We don’t talk.We don’t have to.

Our circuit ends with us by the pool, fountain dribbling a lethargic stream into it.We slide off our shoes and sit on the edge to dangle our feet into it, and it’s as warm as tub water after a day of unforgiving sun.He skates his soles across the tops of my feet and creates an eddy around our calves.Our hands are still joined, so I rub my thumb in soft lines over his palm, and he looks up at me through his lashes and gives me that certain smile that makes my heart skip a beat every time I see it.I close my eyes and try to memorize the moment—the weightlessness of the water, the fragrance of the air, the warmth of his hand, the golden shine of his skin in the slant of evening light.When it is my time to die, this is what I want my addled mind to find again, this very moment, this one sliver of indescribable peace.This is the light that I want to move toward into oblivion.

It is our Heaven.

Day has officially crossed into night when Elio leans over and whispers, “Let’s swim.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“But…”

Whatever idiotic protests I was about to make die when he rises and starts to undo the button of his shorts, letting them and his boxers slide down before he tosses them into the grass.His shirt quickly follows, and he crouches next to me, miles of skin nearly glowing in the dim light, and says, “Follow me,” and pushes off and into the water.

I obey wordlessly, stripping down and sinking into the warm depths.We each do a few slow lengths back and forth before stopping.I paddle down to where he waits for me at the other end, kneeling on the bottom and resting his head on the concrete lip.I hover in front of him, holding myself still by clutching the edge on either side of his head. He bobs there, curls dripping, a wicked smile showing the tips of his teeth. 

“This feels great,” he murmurs.He floats forward a bit and wraps his arms around my neck.“Do you like this, Oliver?”

Like? _Like?_ What kind of question is that?

I let go of the wall and slide my hands below the water, running them slowly down his back until I hold the soft swell of his buttocks in both my hands.I watch his face as I massage lightly, trailing the tips of my fingers through the crease and curling around to the tops of his thighs.“Do I like _this_?”I repeat, my voice is pitched low, rasped, as if a mere vibration of the water between us.His face is so wonderfully expressive, so I can see every grasp and twitch of my fingers played out there.His eyes are closed, and his head rolls slightly back and forth while his open mouth moves, as if trying to form words that do not yet exist.I pull his hips against me, hard, sloshing water against the bricks, and his legs automatically come up to wrap around my waist. His eyebrows twitch, and he gasps softly.“You tell me.”

His eyes pop open and pin me.His hands come up around my neck, and his intent gaze drops to my mouth.His fingertips trace the outline of my lips while mine trace his lines and curves below the water.“Oliver, can I kiss you?” he breathes.

“Yes, please.”

We float until his back is against the side wall, and the moment his tongue pushes into my mouth, my circling finger pushes into him.He whimpers low in his throat and arches his back, moving instinctively against me.I steadily lose myself in the sensations, a slave to the silken writhing siren in front of me.My face drops to his throat, and he tips his head back; I gnaw and lick at the wet skin there as he pants and babbles up into the thick air above us, curses and endearments, until one word tumbles beautifully onto my ear:“Elio…”

When he stiffens and cries out, I’m too far gone to resist following him once again, compressing my own name into the delicate skin of his shoulder.

As his breathing slows, he leans back, hands still clasped behind my neck.It is fairly dark at this point, so I cannot see his expression entirely, but I feel his eyes roving over my face.I keep my arms around him firmly; for some reason, I just can’t bring myself to let him go yet.I push my legs away from the wall, and we spin as one in a slow arc around the water. 

“Elio, you…you…”

My mind cannot go beyond that.All it has room for at this moment is him.

He hums and rubs his cheek against mine, soft strokes against the scratch of stubble that’s there.He kisses my jaw and rests his head on my shoulder.We hold on, neither speaking, just floating along in incomprehensible patterns in the dark, listening to the chirp of insects and the rustle of leaves in the hint of summer breeze.

It’s not until we start to get chilled that we reluctantly part and climb out to find our clothing.

As we steady each other to put our shoes back on, Elio asks, “You ever going to want to swim in there now that we’ve polluted the water?”His lips are quirked in a half smile.

I huff a laugh.“What, are you kidding me?I want to take baths in there now.” 

He giggles.

We start to walk slowly back to the villa, and I put my arm around his shoulders.“I’m going to baptize myself in that water every day.Don’t think I won’t.”

He pokes my ribs.“That’s so—“

“Charming?Witty?Unbelievably practical?”

“I was going to say _sick_.”

“No way!”

“Yes.” 

“Who _me_?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Elio,” I cluck, rolling my eyes dramatically and shaking my head.“You have no idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mafalda's muttered comments to Elio and Oliver should be something like, "My boys...disappearing in America...ridiculous..." I hope I've come close to this!
> 
> Do you have any idea how much I love your comments?? All of you help me to see the story in different ways, ways I never could alone, and I LOVE when that happens; plus, the kindness that you've shown to this point has buoyed my spirit in myriad ways, so PLEASE, let me know what you think!


	3. And So It Goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when Elio and Oliver seem to have it all together, an unexpected visitor arrives. Could he be Oliver's worst nightmare?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And every time I've held a rose  
> It seems I only felt the thorns  
> And so it goes, and so it goes  
> And so will you soon I suppose.  
> “And So It Goes” by Billy Joel

He’s disappearing.

The crushing tumult of the river carries him farther downstream.It’s so loud, the roar painful in my head, and I cower as it pounds my eardrums.I totter and slip on the black-slick rocks along the shore.The mist and spray leave me blind.“Elio?”

Nothing.Where did he go?I’m cold; my head throbs.I hate this place.Where _is_ he?

“ _Elio?_ ”

A hand, pale and thin, extends above the waves, thrashing back and forth against the force of the white water.Suddenly, his head pops up and turns toward me, wet curls thrown back.Our eyes connect for just a few seconds.He smiles and waves, a strained, weak gesture.

He looks sad. _Why is he sad?_

Oh.

It’s a good-bye.

No, it _can’t_ be!

I try to run along the banks after him, but I skate and sink on the wet, uneven terrain.I wade out into the current, stumbling under the pressure.The water is thick and strong, swirling and foaming and treacherous.One more step and it will be too much.It will sweep me away.I’ll never recover.

What’s happening? _Elio, come back!_

No.

Stop, Elio.Please.Stop.

He’s sucked under the water again.

No!

He’s not coming back.He’s gone.

_ELIO!_

I jerk violently and suck in a long, rattling breath, flopping on the mattress like a fish on the stern of a boat.The thin sheet is wrapped around my torso, a boa constrictor in pale yellow, and I rip at it to free myself.I am drenched, sweat beading on my chest despite the pleasant breeze that circles in from the window, and I fight to slow the panicked wheezing from my chest. _Shit._ I scrub my hand up and down my face, wiping away the moisture and the lingering cobwebs that still cloud my vision with the mists of the intense dreamworld that had suffocated me and left me helpless and alone.I rarely have dreams that wake me, ones that rattle my bones and burn themselves into my brain so indelibly that every time I blink, I can see them reform from the darkness.But this one will not let me go.Danger still pulses in my blood, regardless of the cheery brightness our bedroom reflects back to me when my eyes open once more.

The bed is empty.I have no idea what time it is or how long I’ve slept, though the slant of the light suggests it is still morning.Vaguely I make out the muted sounds of dishes clanking and doors shutting in the kitchen below, which offers some grounding, a bit of normalcy to let me rejoin my waking life.I push myself to the edge of the bed and flatten my feet onto the hardwood floor.The smooth, cool texture of it also soothes me.For a moment, I see Elio’s toes tentatively climbing onto mine in the shadows of midnight, the playful hesitance in both of us before the rush of passion took us away.

_Does this make you happy?_

I pad into the bathroom to splash water on my face.The mirror shows me a haggard face that I shudder to claim as my own.Red eyes, pale brow, furrowed skin.I don’t think I’ve looked worse.Then, I remember the morning after my twenty-ninth birthday.Elio and I had spent the evening at a piano bar down the street from our apartment; what had started as a quiet night together was turned on its ear when Elio slid in front of the ancient Baldwin to play his latest composition, a surprise written especially for me.It was beautiful and simple, lighthearted and poignant in all the right amounts, just like him.His impish smile as he played, the furtive glances that he’d shot at me before turning deliberately back to the keys—I was moments from losing it completely, yanking him off the bench and dragging him home.But his performance led to customers and employees clamoring about him as The Piano Man, and all but swooning when he followed up my gift with a few lines from that song as a joke.Eventually, it became a challenge for them to try to stump him, but from Billy Joel to Duke Ellington, Elton John to Bach, he blazed through them all while I wound up behind the bar mixing our drinks, our liquid trophies won from the defeated patrons who were still desperate to get him to play their favorites. 

Before the night was over, he pounded away on “Leave a Tender Moment Alone” while I belted out the lyrics, falsetto and all. 

He and I both spent most of the next day crawling between our bed and the bathroom, vainly promising to never ingest another drop of alcohol again in our lives. 

But muzzy nausea and a throbbing migraine didn’t matter to me in the least.It still had been one of the best nights of my life.The blur of inebriation did not dim from my memory the look on Elio’s face as he watched me sing, knowing how much it took for me to let myself go like that.What he probably didn’t realize is that it had absolutely nothing to do with the drinks.It was _him_.Elio was gorgeous and sweet and brilliant, hair bouncing to the movement of his arms, red dusting the apples of his cheeks.I sang every word directly to him, our eyes connected as if we were entirely alone in the bar, alone in the entire world.It was all I needed to allow myself to unfurl.And this glorious creature—the man who could play a Rolodex of tunes that he didn’t know simply by audiating from a few hummed pick-up notes _and_ do so well enough to make applause shake the glasses behind the bar— _he_ was looking at _me_ as if I’d hung the moon simply because I was standing before him, brazenly serenading him in a husky voice, a martini cupped in my hands and outrageous tears pushing at the corners my eyes.

I wash up and dress to go in search of Elio.Voices rumble from the professor’s study, but Elio’s isn’t one of them, so I cross through the kitchen and find him at the table outside eating figs and chatting with Marzia.

He leaps up when he sees me, the grin he’d worn wiped clean by concern.“Hey, what is it?Not feeling good?”

I try to smile, but it only gets as far as a grimace.“I’m all right.”I squeeze his hand.“Bad dream, that’s all.”

He leads me around to a chair with his hand warm on my back, then pours me a cup of steaming espresso.“Here, this stuff cures everything.”

I take a sip and let the caffeine filter into me and nod a polite hello to Marzia.She smirks at me and looks down to pick at her plate.Elio grabs a bunch of grapes and tips back in his chair.“She was just telling me about Paris.”Marzia had moved to France’s capital several years before, taking a job at the Musee d’Orsay in the restorations department; I’d always thought it ideal for her, given her quiet patience and love of beauty. “S'il vous plaît—what were you saying?”

She continues her story in French, of which I have only a rudimentary knowledge.She well knows it, too, so her choice is quite purposeful.Her face comes alive again as she picks up their conversation, and I consider how much she might still pine for Elio after all these years. It’s not as if I could blame her, but Marzia’s coldness to me wasn’t due to Elio being mine; it had nothing to do with some kind of equation that showed that I had won and she had lost.Women are far too complex for that simpleton’s way of measuring a situation, the mundane thinking of the average man.Rather, it was that I’d broken his heart when I’d left.Before that, Elio had hurt her, used her, and he had admitted to me how ashamed of himself he had been; still, she had been able to come to terms with and forgive the trespasses against herself.But my crimes were different and worse, for I had hurt _him._ He was someone that she cared for, and she’d had to witness Elio struggle, had to watch him withdraw and grow listless; she’d seen him cry when I had become distant and his hope had all but faded.

She was a true friend.

Thus, I accepted her ire.I had earned it, in her eyes and in mine.It does not matter what has happened in the intervening years; hurting Elio so profoundly is not something I will ever truly forgive myself for, so why should she be any different.

By the time I’ve polished off an egg and a piece of buttered ciabatta, I tune back into their dialogue enough to catch some vaguely familiar names and the word _festa_.“Who’s having a party?”

“We are,” Elio says.“Well, my parents, really.They’re having a few of my father’s associates over for drinks tonight to talk about one of the digs going on near Sesto, and so I told Marzia she should come over and bring anyone from town who might be around.You know, might be fun to see some people, catch up on what they’re doing.”He gives a soft smile.“Or tell them what we’ve been up to.”

“Fine by me.”

I wink at him, and Marzia folds her napkin and rises to leave.We get up to escort her to the door, but she shoos us away with a nod and a parting, “Je vous verrai plus tard.”

We spend the afternoon on our bikes navigating around the familiar roads and seeing which landmarks have changed since we were here last.There are small differences—new shop signs, some missing trees, some extra traffic with faintly newer cars, but the overall landscape remains unchanged.It’s like a time warp, as if northern Italy were so content with itself, so satisfied with its history, that it had decided to stay just as it was and opt out of the relentless path of progress followed by the rest of the world.It was easy for the years to melt away when we came here since everything felt so much like it had been; it never aged so it’s as if we never had, either.It was restorative in the extreme.

I realize as I pedal along behind Elio that the real difference is within me.When I’d first traveled these roads, I’d been anxious, soaking in their placid turns to create a map for later use, a definitive map that would lead me back here, to the one experience in my life that showed I’d truly lived.I’d taken a chance on coming here, a gamble to acquire what I’d wanted all my life: clarity.

But Elio was right about maps; what they really show is how nothing of consequence can be planned.I had gotten what I wanted when I came to Italy, just not in the way I ever would have bargained for.Clarity had not come to me as the result of study or the words of time-worn wisdom passed down from the ancients as a window to the present day.It was not a conscious choice on my part or a calculated, rational decision for self-improvement.It had come from looking into the face of someone else and seeing myself reflected there, knowing I had a home in his heart and he in mine, the incalculable genius of love.

Now, as I watch the muscled lines in his calves pump, watch as he grips the handlebars tighter and rises from the seat to coast down a hill with his shirt billowing in the wind, watch as he turns his serene face to the sun and whoops, all could not be clearer.The only map I will follow is one that is alive, in motion, reaching out to me with supple fingers to beckon me on, boldly carving out our own lines in the uncharted margins where the monsters once lurked and angels feared to tread.

We get lemonade in town and commandeer a small table at the edge of the square.It’s hot, and there is little movement beyond a stray Vespa passing through and two older women who hunker off the bus and disappear up an alley.I love it.I love the profound quiet, the slow pace that is totally denied to us in New York.My ears seem to ring as I slump there, an alarming residual effect of their constant assault as a part of city life, something I only fully appreciate during these brief periods when the biggest racket I have to endure is the ringing of the church bells at high noon.

I convince Elio to go home by way of Monet’s berm.“Come on, Elio, it’s an important landmark.”His nose crinkles, so I shrug.“I want to visit the place where I experienced my last first kiss.”

At my words, his face transforms, a tantalizing collage of amazement and lust.I can tell I’ve surprised him—he’d never thought of it that way.This realization alone is enough to fill me with a warm rush of satisfaction.I want to tease him about it, but I can do nothing at that moment but offer a ridiculously besotted smile and brush his ankle with the tips of my toes.

_Damn,_ _I am in deep._

We wade through the grass and approximate where we had been before, and our eyes meet briefly, enough for each to know that we have the same idea.We flop down and go through the motions of our first encounter there, as if we’re acting out a movie of our very own lives.It is wonderfully familiar and oddly voyeuristic and unbelievably erotic, all at once.I trace his mouth with my finger, letting him pull it into his mouth this time; when he raises his face to mine, we giggle as his pointed tongue makes its deliberate lick up the front of my face, but this time it’s followed by a wet slide around my gums and along my own tongue that nearly undoes me completely.

“Elio?“ I suck in a needy breath.

He leans back “Yeah, Oliver?”

“Offend me.”

He surges up, knocking me back into the grass, hands everywhere at once.Part of my mind sees the old me, smirking at him condescendingly and lifting his palm away from me.How did I ever have the strength to do that?How could I have tasted him yet still manage to push him off and say _no_?How did I ever think that would be enough for me and that I could go back to my hollow life as if it had never happened?

How could I ever have been that much of a fool?

As I lay there beneath him, listening to the soft noises he makes, reveling in the way he directs me, the way he reads me and plays upon my skin the music he finds there, I can scarcely figure out how to breathe, unsure even what is him and what is me.There is only harmony; there is no space for a single measure of dissent.

I run my hands up his throat, massaging the back of his head with my fingertips.“Do you like this Elio—us?” 

_The smile_.“It’s not bad.”

“You were my first, you know.”

His eyebrows lower.“Your—what, your first boy?I always wondered.”

I huff a laugh and shake my head.“No.”

“Oh, so there _were_ others?Now we’re getting somewhere,”he purrs wickedly.

“ _No_ ,” I purse my lips.“You were the first person I have ever been in love with.”I think for a moment.“I guess that makes you the only one.”I stare unabashedly into his eyes.“You’re the only one.”

He doesn’t say anything.He just raises his hand and cups my cheek.His eyes move between mine, and their expression tender but mixed with some other emotion that I cannot define.I feel a ghost of something then, the memory of Elio’s face in my dream, remote and resigned, like a valediction, before he disappeared for good.

 

* * *

 

I nurse a glass of wine and watch Elio talk to one of his father’s friends in flawless French, volleying between that and Italian as his mother passes by and pats his shoulder and gives him a smile on her way to the kitchen to check Mafalda’s progress.I’d convinced him to wear a silk shirt in a deep forest green, and I am regretting it severely.It brings out his eyes to a startling degree; offset all the more by his lightly tanned skin and perfectly scruffy hair, it is driving me to distraction.Add to the effect the manner with which he caresses every syllable of a Romance language, and it is almost more than I can bear.

Gratefully, Samuel calls me over and introduces me to two other gentlemen as “our Oliver,” and they both shake my hand vigorously, as if they’ve just been waiting to put a face to the name.We get embroiled in a discussion of Joseph Conrad and the questionable character of ethics of the modern world.It is fascinating, but I can’t help feeling the topic has left me a little out of my depth. 

“Is it the nature of man to usurp?” one asks of me ponderously.It sounds merely rhetorical, but he peers at me intently.

“I would like to think not,” I answer carefully, “yet little in our collective patterns throughout time suggests that we will not take what we can _because_ we can, regardless of consequence.”

“Is consequence of such great import?” the other interjects.“Some would say consequence should be dictated, a product of intention, instead of left to chance.”

“Perhaps it is in regard to the consequences that cannot be foreseen that we must demur.Can a being be ethical otherwise?We could not consider ourselves to be evolved truly if we have no shame, no respect for the relative nature of our existence.”

The two men begin to mutter excitedly to one another, and Samuel catches my eye.He makes a vague gesture, a movement of his fingers in the sign of a cross, then winks at me. _Flying colors_.I feel a small smile creep onto my lips, and I bow my head to take a sip of my wine.

Across the room, I see that some of Elio’s friends have started to arrive, including Marzia.A couple of them look vaguely familiar.Rafael waves at me, and I nod and smile in return; he is the one who is a savant with the genre of science fiction and, the last Elio had heard, had gone to film school in Rome.Leo pops through the door like a Jack in the box, and they laugh.He has always been obsessed with Marzia, unable to understand what her interest had been in Elio.He slides over to her and puts his arm around her waist to whisper something in her ear; I can see her roll her eyes and answer with a few short words which cause his hand to drop immediately.

Marzia drags Elio to the door and waves at someone new to enter, a young man I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.I drift closer to get a better look.

The man’s eyes glitter.His eyebrow raises infinitesimally as his head declines slightly, which makes his eyes slide up to Elio’s in an almost coquettish fashion. “Hi, El.It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Elio’s face flames red, "Andre?"  As he stares, his gaze turned glassy, almost dreamy.“Yeah, it has.” 

Andre steps into Elio’s space and says softly, “I missed you,” then slips his arms around Elio’s shoulders.Elio stands stiff for a moment, as if shocked, before slowly raising his arms to reciprocate.From where I’m standing, I catch that his eyes fall closed for a few seconds, hands tightening against Andre’s back.My chest feels injected with lava.I want to scream and throw myself at them, tear the man’s arms off and throw him to the ground.Instead, I turn away and go to the kitchen to refill my glass.

When I return to the living room, Elio and Andre stand in front of the piano, and the latter points to a few bars and murmurs a comment I cannot hear.I approach slowly, not wanting to make it seem as if I’m rushing to intervene, that I might have reason to do so.I gradually realize that what I had imagined to be my token casual saunter was really coming across as something of a predatory stalking, so I pause to take another swallow of wine and adjust my grimace into a passable facsimile of a smile.

Elio sees me and grins, “Oliver!You’ve got to meet Andre.”

The man glances up from the page and turns to shake my hand, though I notice he does not step back to include me in the circle he and Elio have made in front of the keyboard.He is attractive, his blonde curls nearly an albino match to Elio’s, and his deeply tanned skin glows under the villa’s lights, accentuated by the pale blue shirt that he wears open-collared over neatly tailored navy slacks.He is a few inches shorter than I, but the full force of his personality makes him tower over the room.He knows it, and in the barest curl of a smirk when he takes in my face, he sees that I know it, too.

“Did you and Elio go to school together?”

His smile grows conspiratorial as his eyes slide to Elio’s face.“Oh, well, I guess you could say that,” he drawls in his faint accent, and I watch in horror as a matching smile appears on Elio’s face.And he blushes.“My family lives next door, though I’ve lived in England for a number of years.”

“Andre was a year ahead of me in school.He went on to the Royal Academy of Music,” Elio explains.

“And I take it piano is also your instrument?”

He gives me a rather detached look, the kind one gives to a tedious child.“Good guess,” he quips, pointedly flipping the page of the music on the rack that they’d been discussing.

_Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?_

It flips a switch in me.

My spine subconsciously straightens, and I laugh lightly and run a hand through my hair.I lean down toward Andre’s face and murmur, “It’s a gift.Stick around long enough, and I’ll tell your fortune, too.”I clap him on the shoulder, toss out a parting, “Later!” and pivot away to chat up Rafe for a while on the other side of the room.As I turn, I catch a strained look in Elio’s eyes, but my armor’s on tight by then.I don’t even acknowledge him.

Rafe and I talk about his latest project, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s _The Martian Chronicles_.He is fascinated by the chapter in which insanity causes the Martians to externalize their dreams and visions; with no way to differentiate the dream world from reality, it causes them to be unwilling to recognize an invader in their midst.“They kill themselves because they cannot believe in a non-sequitur that could turn their world to ashes.Can you imagine?”

I swallow thickly.“Yes.Yes, I can, actually.”

I watch surreptitiously as Elio and Andre laugh infectiously, bending their heads together to share stories from times past, times that I played no role in.Their hands brush each other’s shoulders, arms, legs.Elio leans back to watch Andre’s face, animated and intent on whatever tale he is spinning, watches him with fascination and admiration, and it makes bile rise in my throat.

They’re a good match—perfect, really:two young and gorgeous intellects, Continental and polyglot, talented and at ease.

Marzia breezes by and follows my eyes to the corner.She looks down at me with satisfied derision.“You were lucky to get him the first time.I doubt it would happen again.”

I leave to trade my glass for scotch, and when I return, there’s a commotion around the piano, and I see Andre sit with a flourish on the bench and say to the others, “It’s like this.”He plays a few lines of a Chopin piece, then holds up a finger.“Or like _Liszt_ ,” and again the notes come, but more forcefully, “if you’d rather be a showman instead of a poet.”The group laughs, and Andre smirks, “Or a scamp, like Mozart,” and the notes return, dancing as impishly as Andre’s sidelong look to Elio, who chuckles.

Then, it hits me:Liszt’s version of Bach, Busoni’s version of Liszt.That early flirtation between the two of us.All of that had been Andre’s schtick?I feel dirty, as if discovering that the name at the top of a treasured love letter had been erased and my name merely written over it, a second-hand gesture, an afterthought.

I stand on shaky legs, and I just catch Elio turning toward me as I stalk out of the room and up the stairs.I close the bedroom door and sit on the edge of the bed.My hands are trembling, so I knot them together to try to stop their motion.My head sinks down to rest on my knuckles.

After a few minutes, I hear the door open.

“Oliver?Oliver, what are you doing?”

I raise my head slowly and stare at him hard.

His gaze falls, and he says quietly, “Please.Please don’t be upset.I’m just…surprised to see him, that’s all.”

“I saw you hug him, Elio.You didn’t stiffen up because he surprised you.You hesitated because you knew you’d _like_ it.But you just couldn’t resist doing it anyway, could you?”

“He left here barely a month before you arrived in ’83.I haven’t—“

“Gotten over him?Yeah, I can see that.”

“That’s _not_ what I was going to say!”

“No, but it’s what you meant.”I leap up and stalk around the room, feeling as if my skin were suddenly too tight for my frame, my blood pressure painfully high.“You were in love with him, weren’t you?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Are you still?”I lean on my palms against the desk, unable to look at him, facing out to the blackness beyond the window.“If he had never left, would you and I even be here?”

I can hear him draw a long, noisy breath through his hands.“Listen, Oliver—“

But I can’t.I can’t stand there and listen to him let me down gently, tactfully explaining to me how his heart had never been mine, that it had been on loan the entire time, simply because the person he _really_ loved, the one who was perfect for him in every way, had yet to come home to claim it.I didn’t want him to explain that I had been only a helpful distraction for him all those years ago, that he’d been merely trying to forget another, and he’d been grateful for my part in keeping him occupied, but now that the person he’s truly made for has reappeared, he had no further need for my services.

“Just don’t.”My voice sounds twisted and bitter, even to my ears.I keep my eyes on the floor so I don’t have to look at his face because I am certain that would break me for good.I grab my wallet and leave before he can say another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Billy Joel’s song “Leave a Tender Moment Alone” is quintessential Oliver; it’s told from the perspective of a shy man who has difficulty letting his true emotions out; check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sTBbyZSHyw&list=RD8sTBbyZSHyw&t=14
> 
> Audiation is a term used by theorist Edwin Gordon in reference to one’s musical aptitude, to essentially think in terms of music as one typically does with a native verbal language.
> 
> For more on Elio’s thoughts on maps, check out “The Long Road,” the second installment in the series.
> 
> Joseph Conrad is the author of Heart of Darkness, a bleak tale of white Colonialism and racism.
> 
> Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is one of my favorite books of all time; any literature that holds an unapologetic mirror up to humanity is one I will savor. The chapter referred to here is “August 1999: The Earth Men” in which an early group of human visitors to Mars are ignored, assumed to be merely the projected delusions of insane Martians, a corruption of their telepathic abilities. After a few failed expeditions to Mars, the fourth is successful because most of the Martian population has been eradicated by chicken pox, which reacted in their bodies like immolation, turning them to ash.
> 
> This was SO HARD to write, so I am wringing my hands here--I need to know your thoughts!


	4. Clarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver is reeling after his fight with Elio. He is forced to reassess the situation by reassessing himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sink like a stone that's been thrown in the ocean.  
> My logic has drowned in a sea of emotion.
> 
> "Be Still My Beating Heart" by Sting

I have no idea what I’m doing.

My vague plan of finding a bar and getting roaring drunk is hijacked by the realization that I’ve no practical way to get to town at this time of night other than the Perlmans’ car, and there’s no way I’m going back inside to ask for the keys.I stumble through the darkness, sweaty and nauseated.“What do I do?What am I supposed to do now?” I mutter.I can feel my lips trembling, so I shove my fist against my face to stop the cascading motion from pulling the ready tears from my eyes.My heart wrenches like a kite made of balsa wood, caught by a gale, ready to snap its line and crash into cheap, meaningless pieces on the ground. 

Have I lost him? _Fuck._

I can’t breathe.I grit my teeth and wheeze rattling breaths that sounds hauntingly like the tortured gasps of my grandfather in his last days before he succumbed to lung cancer.

Have I?

_Have I lost him?_

Suddenly I realize where I am:I’ve come out to the spot I used to occupy night after night during our summer, where I would look up to the stars and replay the day’s conversations, the various expressions I’d seen pass Elio’s face, whatever dark longings I’d suppressed throughout the afternoon in the constant effort to keep myself from pushing Elio up against a wall and devouring his perfect pink pout.

I fall against the concrete and try to imagine leaving Italy alone again, leaving without Elio tucked into the seat next to me on the plane, head resting on my shoulder, weathered paperback scissored open by his thumb; without him to kiss my temple and buckle my seatbelt as he always does when it’s time to land.I try to picture what it would be like to open the door to our apartment and drop my bag on the floor with a hollow thud and look around at Elio’s music littered over the desk and his favorite mug on the counter, the leather coat I gave him for his birthday three years ago that smells of his aftershave around the collar hanging in the closet, his plum-colored button down shirt still draped over the arm of the sofa after I’d removed it from him, button by button, while he sucked on my earlobe and scrubbed his fingers through my hair—and know that he’d never come back to claim them.He’d send for his effects from far away, or worse, leave everything behind to let it sear like acid in the raw wound of my heart.

My stomach twists more as I feel the ghosting of Elio’s hands on my thighs when we’d sat here together years before and talked, _finally_ talked without the stifling barriers between us, after all of those weeks of sparring and avoiding and hiding.I remember being baffled that he hadn’t understood how much I had wanted him all of that time, that he actually had thought I disliked him—no, _hated_ him—interpreting my intense gazes as frigid disdain when they had really been nothing more than my soft and clumsy attempts to soak him in, to grab his attention, to hold him as long as I could in the field of my vision before his light wavered and vanished, and my world went dark once more.

I had assumed that I was so obvious in my craving for him that the whole of humanity could read my every thought as if I’d had a neon sign popping out of my head.Hell, even as I had played volleyball surrounded by at least a dozen visitors in the middle of the afternoon, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him.I repeatedly fumbled volleys and cried out enthusiastic nonsense to my fellow players because my attention was incessantly drawn to the sidelines where Elio strutted around in nothing but his shorts, one of his curls draping adorably across his forehead.I had slid my aviators higher on my nose so no one could follow my eyes, and as I pretended to anticipate the next serve, I ran through desperate scenarios in my head:

First idea:“Elio, you should really put on some sunscreen.Here, let me help you.”

Then I imagined actually having to rub cream across the smooth planes of his chest, working it into his skin, my palm making slow swirls on the flat of his back, moving around to push into his abdomen, my fingertips reaching up to graze his nipples while they slowly harden—

And I quickly had to kill that scheme because I was doing the same, and the trusty green shorts that I had worn that day left little to the imagination.

Next idea:“Hey, Elio, I think I’ve stepped on a wood splinter on that last play.Think you could dig it out for me before it gets embedded?”

Then I pictured myself laying back on my elbows as he would pull my leg up over his own and cradle it between his thighs to steady it while he scoured my sole, maybe sliding his feet up under my shorts, gripping my hips with his toes to anchor himself, and—

Ok, same result.Another plan down in flames.

So I had opted for simplicity, perhaps lunacy, just rushing over and scooping up the bottle of water from his hand, nearly choking as I gulped it down and lunged for his arm to keep him from walking away. _Really smooth, Oliver_.I babbled some tripe about his tense muscles and slid behind him so that he couldn’t see how scared I was.If I was sweating and breathless, everyone would assume that it was from the game, not from the effort of keeping my ardor in check.I threw out a joke about being a doctor and started to palpitate the muscles of his shoulder. _Oh, dear God_.His skin was just as I’d imagined it would be, tender and soft as silk, precious velvet pinned delicately to a strong network of sinews, and my veil of humor spun into giddiness, my thready voice betraying the helpless need, which grew more so as Elio flinched and jerked away.He acted like I was a creepy guy at a bus station, pawing at him in some sick predatory display, and the pendulum of my elation swung to hot embarrassment; I turned to Marzia, stupidly asking her to “back me up” and handed off my dreams to her, the ones that I so clearly was not meant to have.

And then I ran.

I ran back to the game and leapt into my serve.I ran to the fawning glances of my partner, a sweet girl whose curvaceous form and coy smile left me cold.I ran from the insistent voices in my head that reminded me of the sound of Elio’s laugh and the little noises he would make when he was reading a novel, laid out on the grass in the shade, following the tide of the action as if watching a film inside his head.Most of all, I ran from the house, from the torturous knowledge that every night Elio was stripped down and lying in a bed just feet away from me on the other side of a flimsy door, so close I could hear the creak of his bed springs when he would roll over, repeating to myself that I would never be next to him to feel those movements, that he would never shift on his pillow and reach out for me with warm fingers and a naughty smile blooming across his face.

I ran here.Just like I had tonight.

Back then, Elio had thought my extended absences traitorous, assumed that I was bedding everything with boobs in a fifty-mile radius.I saw it in the raw looks he shot me, the contemptuous way he would turn away from me or flaunt his flirtations with Marzia.I never corrected him.I bit my tongue and let it ride, allowed him his unspoken indictments, allowed him to convict me of crimes I would never commit simply because he saw a fraction of the evidence and pronounced me guilty.Part of me was relieved; his disdain made it easier to resist him.Nevertheless, it rankled me that he could have been so blind.How could he not have known?How could he have connected with me so strongly, brushed my soul with his nimble fingers, yet still believe I would prance around town like a careless, wanton gigolo?

It is amazingly easy to fool people who look at a new scene through an old and dirty lens.

I rub my eyes and think of my earlier conversation with Rafe about Bradbury.I’d shared with him that the part of the book that had always stuck with me was the one following his film’s inspiration, in which the Martians use their telepathy as a weapon, delving into the minds of the next expedition of Earthmen and creating a collective delusion in which the crew’s treasured memories come to life, dead relatives walking and talking in towns that no longer exist.It leaves them utterly unguarded.Few hearts are stout enough to resist a sweet, gentle grandmother bounding out of her house in greeting while the smell of her cooking fills the air or a dead brother resurrected and folding you into his hearty embrace, and it is not until the crew’s captain drifts toward sleep and allows his thoughts to coalesce in the darkness, permits himself to assess the situation with a modicum of logic, that the horrible truth becomes clear.

But he takes too long.They are annihilated.

Their destruction was an easy matter because the Martians tapped into the most prevalent of all human behaviors:seeing what one wants to see.It was familiar, it was what they were used to, so they succumbed to it.They assisted in their own destruction because they forgot that they were on a totally foreign landscape with its own rules; they neglected to adjust their thought patterns to accommodate that major shift in perspective—quite literally, it was a whole new world.But few people really want to live in the now because most would rather wallow in the past and repeat it endlessly until we spin ourselves into the ground like suicidal tops, spiraling downward until our limbs are pinned in the tombs we’ve arduously created for ourselves.

_Boats against the current_.Fitzgerald.

Boy, I really _am_ a fucking imbecile.

In the cerebral biology of all of us is the instinctive choice between fight or flight.The latter is lower-order, operating on a thoughtless cascade of relays, pure impulse:Go fast!Get out!Mere survival is considered a success.And in the hideous miracle of our evolution, we learned to _anticipate_ catastrophe, to suss out what _might_ happen and respond as if it had.

This is the option to which I’ve defaulted consistently, conditioning myself to it, marinating in it.And it worked.For decades, I’ve surely stayed alive.When the heat got too much, I turned to ice; when the binding got too tight, I cut and ran.When the situation demanded _now_ , I slithered away on, “Later!”

But on a hierarchy of needs, settling for that pattern does not remotely equate with truly living.There has to be fulfillment, a reason to stay alive, or there’s no point in continuing to exist. 

_What actually happened tonight?Let’s review, shall we, Oliver?_

A person Elio used to know and hasn’t seen in seven years is invited by someone else to his parents’ home, and Elio has the audacity to talk to the man and be friendly and interested while he did it.Meanwhile, he forgot to babysit the grumpy asshole to whom he has agreed, for reasons surpassing understanding, to officially bind himself for life.He forgot to soothe my fragile ego when my sensibilities were ruffled and I chose to respond by ignoring him.Then, I used supposition to draw a conclusion and stomped from the room like a child, and when Elio left all of his guests to retrieve me, I didn’t even let him talk before I threw accusations at him and stormed out to pout in the woods, forcing him to go back downstairs and face everyone alone.

That’s great.That’s just _smashing_.I’d really want to marry me, too.

Apparently, when it suits me, I forget that we’re all capable of higher-order responses which allow us to engage our intellect, to assess the real danger before acting, to ride out the few moments of terror before determining if the peril had been legitimate or, ironically, all in our heads.I’ve spent my professional career in pursuit of academic enlightenment, reveling in the ambiguity and wisdom to be found in theoretical analysis, fancying myself erudite and sophisticated as a result.It should have honed my skills, sharpened my talents for critical thinking, but none of it matters a goddamn bit if I leave my hippocampus to rot dormant in my skull while the amygdala gets all the action.

A person has to be willing to dig in and fight, especially if the life he has is one worth fighting for.

And if the honor of being loved by Elio Perlman were not worth an all-out war, then not a speck of existence is worth accepting.Elio is _everything_.

I push my way through the vegetation until I’m within the circle of light emanating from the villa’s windows.I see in passing that Samuel and his colleagues are in his study, huddled around his desk examining diagrams and conferring with various texts that lay open around them.I decide to go through the back entrance, hopeful that this may conceal the fact that I’ve been gone, not merely upstairs or in another part of the house.Perhaps that will make my lengthy absence less awkward, my reappearance less mortifying.I’m not sure why.I’ve earned my shame, and I’ve come home to claim it, like the flag of a fallen soldier.I’ll fold it neatly and put it on the mantle, an invisible memento of the selfish man I have so often been.

As I slide in the door, I hear music playing.I take three steps before I realize what it is:Elio is playing the song he’d written for me.

I clench my fists hard and grind my teeth so tight they creak.There it is: while I was whinging in the yard, licking my scars, he was in here carrying on, recreating a moment when he’d been happy, when _I’d_ been happy with _him_.

_That’s it.I’m done.Enough of this bullshit._

I stride into the living room just as he finishes the last notes. 

“Play it again.”In my peripheral vision, I see all the heads in the room swivel to me.But I am watching Elio’s face, the way his eyes grow round and watery, how his lips compress and wrench to the side, warring between profound hurt and grateful relief.“I love that song.”

Elio swallows several times before he can answer.“I wrote it.”

My eyes couldn’t leave his if I were on fire.“I know.It’s beautiful.”

In the fringes, I see Andre toss his head and snicker.Marzia elbows him.

Elio’s voice is raspy.“I wrote it for the person I love.”His hands automatically find their place on the keyboard, though his eyes are still with mine.“I’ve never done that before.”

“What, written a song for someone?”

“No.”He plays a few measures softly.“Been in love.”

“I’m not—“My voice cracks.“I’m not sure that’s true…anymore.”My heartbeat could well break my ribs.

Elio’s gaze does not waver, and his voice is thick, laden with emotion he can barely keep in check.“ _I_ am.”He tilts his head, his face open but determined.“I admit that I’ve been _curious_ before.Interested.Infatuated, perhaps.But _this_?”His hands still move across the keys, floating soft strains of the melody into the thick air around us.“This is my first.”His eyes drill into me.“My _only_.”

“How can I—“The words die.“How can you know that for sure?”All I can get out is a dry whisper.

“ _Because_ , Oliver,”he rasps emphatically.His eyes swell, and he bites his lip for a moment to steady himself.“Because I said _yes!_ ”

If I were not gripping the back of a chair with both hands, I would have sunk to the floor right there in front of everyone.Elio hops up from the bench and rushes over to me and throws his arms around me, fisting his hands in the back of my shirt.I pinch my eyes shut to drink in the smell his hair, his skin, and let it filter in to restore my blood.I squeeze my arms tighter to pull more of it out of him and into me.I hear him speaking, a hushed chanting of, “I’m sorry.God, I’m so sorry…” over and over again.Then, I realize it is me.

I couldn’t give a single shit who is watching us at this point, but the group has turned away already, chatting amongst themselves, giving us a moment of privacy.Or they’ve simply lost interest since Andre has stepped in front of the piano once again.

“Hey, El,” he calls, striking a few chords, “Remember the Bach, the one your dad took us to hear when we were…oh, maybe fourteen?Didn’t you transcribe that, too?”

I relax my grip on him with effort and press a gentle kiss to his forehead.He smiles up at me, swiping at his eyes with the edge of his thumb, and clears his throat.“You mean ‘Sleepers Wake’?”

“That’s the one.”As he plays a string of precise bars, Marzia sits down next to him on the bench and plays with his hair.“Who’d you model that one after, Victor Borge?”His smile sparkles.Marzia pinches his ear.

Elio just gives a close-lipped smile and shakes his head.

From behind us, Rafe’s tired voice calls, “Andre, passiamo oltre, tipo.Try to be not such a dick every now and then, will you?”He’s on the couch, scowling at a black and white image on the television screen which looks a bit like _Dr. Strangelove_.

My eyebrows drift up in surprise, and I look to Elio, who rolls his eyes.“He just likes to tease me.”

I’m missing something here.“Tease you?”

Andre starts to slap at the keys in exaggerated fashion, like a cartoon character, leaning into Marzia’s shoulder and giggling silently.Leo scowls at them and takes a long draw of his beer.

Elio shrugs, “Yeah, you know, like before—the versions of Chopin…”He waves his arm dismissively.“He’s never been as interested in performance style as I am.”

“He—“I stare at Elio, mouth slack, as the tumblers fall into place.“He was making _fun_ of you?”

Now it’s Elio’s turn to be confused.His forehead scrunches.“Yeah,” he says haltingly, eyes darting around my face.“It’s fine, though.I mean, I don’t _mind_ it or anything.He’s just joking around.”

I reach out and grab the rounded fabric of the chair that had held me up before, pressing the other hand into my sternum.I wonder briefly if my chest might rip apart.The effort of containing several huge emotions in the same small space is enormous.The relief is there, rushing in to restore my sacred memories to their rightful place in the innermost chambers of my heart; it is wedged alongside a sharp, aggressive ignominy at realizing that when he had needed me, I’d only piled on and abandoned him instead of offering comfort.

But what overshadows them both is rage.“ _He_ was making fun of _you_?” I repeat, my voice grinding in the back of my throat.My spine slowly straightens and my eyes fixate on Andre, like a wolf on a jackrabbit.He perches unaware on the edge of the bench, whispering something to Marzia, ignoring me completely.

“Oliver…” I hear Elio say, a note of concern in his voice.

I don’t answer him, merely reach out a hand to squeeze his shoulder briefly, a reassurance.My eyes remain on their prey, my breathing reduced to long, silent pulls of air, in and out.“I hear you, Elio, and I ask that all of you kindly forgive my consternation,” I reply smoothly in as conversational a tone as I can muster.“I am merely finding it quite the onerous task to fathom exactly how the _fuck_ that is possible.” 

The room falls deadly quiet.I know that everyone is staring at me with some variation of appalled shock playing out across their features, yet all I care about is the smarmy man in front of Elio’s piano who finally deigns to turn my way, bored amusement painted across every bit of his expression.“What was that?”

“Oh, come now, that’s quite the dubious ear for someone who fancies himself a musician.”

Elio steps forward.“Andre just believes that performance style is irrelevant to the quality of the music itself.”

Andre purses his lips.“El, it’s not what I _believe_ , it’s how it _is_.What matters is on the page, not who sits in front of it.”

I feel my shoulders square themselves as if I’m preparing to throw a punch.“And I rather thought that all text necessitated an interaction of artist and object and audience.”

“Is that another of your philosophies?”He fondles the last word, making it sound less of an academic discipline and more like the name of a venereal disease.

I smile broadly, “Well, if philosophy is too ethereal for you, how about we go with science?Basic sound principles.”I wag a finger at him.“No pun intended, now—do keep up.By definition, sound requires a medium to conduct it and a receptor to receive and process it.Without those, the vibration itself is worthless.”

Andre rises and comes closer to us, sashaying around to the side of the piano, leaning his hip against it and crossing his arms in front of his chest.The thin gold chain around his neck glints in the light.He’s smirking at me, not responding yet, and I want to laugh out loud.It is so evident to me now who he really is.I’ve dealt with people like him all my life.In Connecticut, every third guy seemed to be the middle-management control freak, deplorably average men scared of their own shadows who solve their inner turmoil by passing off their inadequacies onto everyone else.I was raised by one.All foam, no beer.

“Oliver, don’t bother,” Elio murmurs to me, hand on the inside of my elbow.I turn to look at him.His face is drawn up, resigned.He’s used to this.He’s used to being condescended to, being corrected.I imagine how it must have been for him as a youngster, eager and creative, experimenting with musical forms and using voice as an expressive tool, only to have it degraded by someone he respected.What that must have done to his confidence is unimaginable, and my impotent desire to protect him retroactively is matched only by my admiration for what he has been able to accomplish despite it.

For a moment I picture him sitting on the stone bench under the willow tree outside, strumming quiet strains of Bach on his guitar.When I’d complimented him, he had flatly rejected it:“I thought you didn’t like it,” nodding quickly as if the issue had already been decided, as if there were no need for debate, no question about the worthlessness of what he was crafting.It occurs to me that when he had led me inside afterwards and played those piano vignettes of the same song, it was more than a clever flirtation—it was, on some level, a test:would I truly accept his art, and by extension, him?At the time, he had seemed so self-assured, but it was an act of pure daring by the real Elio, the unorthodox boy who hadn’t wished to confine himself to the margins of the page, the boy who sculpts tonal gods of his own making.

“I don’t expect you to understand this, but music is written with specificity and intention.It is disrespectful to toy with what the composer designated.”

Elio shifts and holds up a hand.“Wait, Andre, please don’t talk to him like that.He’s not an idiot.”

“Isn’t he?”

Marzia hovers behind him, chewing the inside of her cheek, eyes owlish.

I take a step forward so that I am close enough to Andre that he has to look up to address me.“If that was supposed to sting, I shall disappoint you.”

Leo clears his throat.“Anyone else thirsty?”He slaps Elio’s back, voice a good two octaves higher than normal.“No?Sure?Ok!”He grabs his glass and hurries off toward the kitchen.

“Merely an observation,” Andre says breezily, looking around at the room instead of at me.“You know nothing, yet you offer it up like it is a prize.”

I nod amiably at him.“You’re right, music is not my forte, but luckily,” I wink at Elio, “I’ve learned from the best.”I slide my hands into my pockets and sigh.“That’s why I can’t help but pity you.”

That gets his head to jerk up so he can sneer in my face.“Pity _me_?Don’t be absurd!”

“I pity anyone who thinks himself an artist, but can only see in two dimensions, a person so filled up on his own fantasies of superiority, he can only manage to regurgitate what others have done.”

“Everything all right here, boys?”Samuel’s deep voice comes from the entryway.His colleagues have started to filter in, searching out snifters and discussing a time for their next meeting.

My eyes stay riveted to Andre’s contemptuous glare as I reply evenly, “No worries here, Pro.This goose is cooked.”I cannot keep my lip from curling, as I turn away from Andre’s red face and go over to the couch and plop down next to Rafe.I see that what he’s watching is actually _Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid_.Hearing Steve Martin grouse in Italian about Marlowe’s stitched samplers is even more bizarre than the original.

Elio remains, having a brief conversation with Andre and Marzia; rather, he listens impassively while the other two exchange words, face blank.I hear Andre murmur, “I guess this is goodbye, El.”He makes it sound like a warning, an ultimatum.

Elio brushes his hand up the back of his head a few times.“Yeah, take care.Have a good trip back to London.”Then, he spins artfully on his heel like he’s executing a dance move and comes over to the couch, wedging himself in between Rafe and I, and puts his feet up on the coffee table.

Marzia walks with Andre to the front door, and when she returns, she plunks down in an armchair.When I look over, she’s staring at me curiously.I raise an eyebrow at her, and her face softens; a small smile flickers across her lips, and she gives me a subtle nod before clearing her throat and asking the room, “Anyone else hungry?”

“Me!”Leo pipes up.

“Mafalda!”Elio calls.

Annella appears out of nowhere. “Ay, pulcino, hush yourself.She’s in bed.Ci sono tante cose da bere e da mangiare—servitevi pure.”

He sighs.“Fine,” and goes with the others into the kitchen.I get up to get a glass of wine, and I hear Samuel come up behind me.

“Want one?” I hold up the bottle so he can read the label.

“Ah!My favorite!”

I hand him his glass, and he takes a sip, lets it roll on his tongue, then swallows it blissfully.“So, I see you finally met Andre.” 

I simply nod.

“And?”He’s watching me with sparkling eyes that have missed nothing.

I open my mouth to reply, but I don’t really know what to say.I don’t wish to sound petty, and I’m not really sure how to translate my real feelings into polite language.All I can do is shrug.

Samuel chuckles from deep in his belly.“Yeah, I never liked that little bastard, either.”

 

* * *

 

That night, Elio and I lay facing each other, stretched out like parallel lines under just the cotton sheet.I hold his left hand in my, tracing the lines of his palm while he talks.“I guess I was glad to see him when he showed up, but I also felt…dread, maybe?Like I’d have to be on my guard.”

“Why?”

He bites his bottom lip.“We were really good friends growing up, but he skipped a grade, so he was a year ahead in his classes, and he always had a way of making me feel unsettled, like I was missing something, and if I had to ask what it was, then that meant I’d never be smart enough to understand it.Does that make any sense?”

“Yes.A lot, actually.”

He sighs.“I always thought I wanted to be just like him.”

“Did you two ever…”

Even in the dark, I can see his cheeks flush.“No.But I did kiss him once.”My grip tightens on his hand, and he chuckles.“We were fifteen, and we were playing a Debussy four-hands arrangement in my living room, just kind of giggling and having fun with it, and when it was over, it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean over and kiss his cheek.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“He never said a word about it.He acted like I’d never done it, and I was too scared to bring it up.I could never figure out what to do.He would flirt with me, or seem to, but when I’d finally work up the courage to try to do anything, he’d pull back, like he wanted me just to dangle there in suspension.”

“So, too far to touch, too close to stray.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

I kiss Elio’s palm.“I guess, in a weird way, I kind of owe him, then.”

His eyebrows pull in.“ _Owe_ him?For what?”

I scoot closer, still cradling his hand, wrapping my pinky around his ring finger.“Because if he hadn’t been such a moron, he’d have you right now, and if he hadn’t been such a _selfish_ moron, someone else would.”

“Oliver, no,” he breathes, “Don’t you know?”He closes his hand around mine.“There was no way…I never could have resisted you.I mean, I tried.We both did.”He smiles softly and lifts his exposed shoulder.“It had to be you.”

I narrow my eyes.“You trying to get me to sing again?”

His voice drops to a purr.“There are better things you can do with your mouth right now.”

“Show me.”

He shifts on his pillow and reaches out for me with warm fingers, a naughty smile blooming across his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The section of The Martian Chronicles that Oliver refers to here is called “April 2000: The Third Expedition.” The crew members, upon seeing their dead relatives, think they’ve landed in Heaven, which looks suspiciously like Green Bluff, Illinois. After the Martians kill the crew, they have a tearful funeral in which they begin to shape-shift back to their original forms.
> 
> The reference to Fitzgerald is a call back to chapter 1 of “The Long Road,” the second installment in the series.
> 
> “Sleepers Wake” is Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140. A piano transcription is played in the film version when Elio lays on his bed and writes in his journal (and probably other places that I can’t currently remember…)
> 
> Elio gives Oliver a music lesson of sorts in chapter 3 of “The Long Road."
> 
> Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is a 1982 movie starring Steve Martin which utilizes clips from classic old movies worked into its storytelling, making people like Humphrey Bogart (as Philip Marlowe) and Bette Davis his co-stars. I liked the idea of having Rafe (who tells Andre to “move on, dude”) watch this since it fits the idea of making something new out of something old. Plus, it’s just plain hilarious!
> 
> I hope what Annella tells Elio and his friends in Italian is that “there’s plenty to eat and drink; just help yourselves.” Standard disclaimer on the translation. :)
> 
> “It Had to Be You” is a Frank Sinatra song.
> 
> My intense desire to know your thoughts has in no way lessened—talk to me! :)


	5. The Answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment finally arrives for Elio and Oliver!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter picks up about two weeks after the events of "The Path of Water."

The din is incredible from the chattering and laughter up and down the long table.There are tall candles lit in the center and bowls of food clattering around.The rest sits on a sideboard, and every ten minutes or so, Mafalda comes in and pokes around, clucking her tongue and stirring spoons.I hear Annella call to her to make herself a plate and sit down, but she waves her off and disappears.

Elio and I are sitting in the center of the table, next to one another. He is in the middle of a conversation with one of his father’s friends across the table, something about the existential implications of the movie _Flatliners_ , which we had seen before flying out here in August, one of our first official acts to celebrate arriving in Rochester and unpacking some boxes at our new place, a townhome community near Eastman where some of the other faculty members lived, courtesy of the arts council that had wooed Elio on the school’s behalf.

As he’s contemplating the existence of a Billy Mahoney on the scale of entire nations, he leans back, casually throwing one elbow onto the back of his chair, stretching out his torso.He’s wearing a sorrel suede jacket that complements his dark hair perfectly and highlights the hazel turns of his irises in a stunning display.I nibble on a crust of bread and watch his profile, the way his thick eyebrows point when he listens thoughtfully, the way his bottom lip pouts slightly while he considers his reply, the way his eyes crinkle when he grins and laughs at some remark.Every bit of him is refined and gorgeous, and I cannot imagine that I’d ever tire of just looking at him, watching him and the magic he creates in simple moments, no matter how many decades pass around us.

We had decided to have our ceremony on New Year’s Eve.It was Elio’s suggestion.He thought that if we had become engaged before a new day could dawn on the anniversary of our first meeting, then we should get married in the minutes before a new year could come.Then we could start the next year, and every year after that, as a joined pair.There was never any question about where we would do this.Italy is where we became _us_ ; this villa is our favorite place in the world, where we have marked so many important moments, and no other place on this planet would feel right to us or have the same level of meaning.

One of Elio’s cousins—a second cousin on his mother’s side, I think—leans down to stare at me with narrowed eyes while he chews meditatively on his bread.“So, Americano…” he begins, his voice gruff.He’s roughly fifty and has a full silver beard that seems to act as a scrub brush for his dinner plate as it currently is tipped in white from his Alfredo sauce.He just keeps chewing.And staring.

I raise my eyebrows as I swallow down a gulp of water.“Sir?”

“You plan to keep Elio in America, then?”

“ _Keep_ him?”

Elio lays a hand on my thigh and leans in front of me.“Per favore, I—we _live_ there, Giorgio.I _work_ there.I’m not a prisoner, tipo.”

Giorgio grimaces.“It is dangerous there, no?”

I nod slightly.“Sometimes, sure.I guess any city has its crime, but…”I shrug, uncertain of what he is suspicious.He doesn’t seem to the type to dislike foreigners, given the brotherly way he greeted Samuel when he’d arrived.I scan my brain to think of anything I could have said to offend him, but there really hasn’t been much of an opportunity for me to speak, given the joviality of everyone present.

“Everyone in America has a gun, I hear.”

I chuckle.“Well, yes, many do, but no one I know.”I glance at Elio, and he rolls his eyes as a smile pushes up the corner of his mouth.

“But will things be dangerous for you now?The both of you?”

His tone is softer, and now I understand.My head drops to Elio’s hand still clutching my leg, and I cover it with my own tightly.Then, I look back at Giorgio, whose intent gaze has not wavered.“I wish I could say no, sir, but the truth is, I don’t know for sure.”My voice is quiet, but much of the racket has waned as others clue into what we’re talking about.“It is possible we will encounter that…um, that particular _kind_ of pain.”

He grunts, and some others around the table murmur to one another.

“The school, the Università,” he gestures with his hand, “they treat you right?”He looks at Elio and then back to me.

It occurs to me that when we return to America, no one will necessarily know what we’ve done.The colleagues that I’ll eventually see at Columbia in the fall will likely not even notice a difference in me.Still, they’ll notice my ring and draw their own conclusions.I’m guessing most will congratulate me and genuinely mean it.Before I’d left on my sabbatical, I’d only told Paul of my plans, the colleague who’d counseled me through my longing with scotch and sage discussion, and he has already offered to throw a party for us at his house.He said he’d told his wife, and she had merely rolled her eyes and declared, “Finally!Why are men such slow learners?”I had shaken my head and laughed, “Excellent question.”

Some there will be wary, the ones who have all along given me subtle sidelong glances and carefully avoided me during my office hours.But in the end, they are intellectuals, so they pride themselves on their heightened liberal views of the world; none want to completely lower themselves to espouse the ignorant rabble of the general population.Plus, it is hard to hate up close.It helps that everyone knows Elio.I’ve never advertised our relationship, but I’ve never hidden it, either.He’s attended enough functions over the years that everyone has had the pleasure of conversing with him, and one cannot know Elio without liking him, without being taken by his acuity and vibrance.Once that happens, once that connection has been made, it is nearly impossible to dissolve a man into jars of pre-formed categories.

I realize that the whole process of revealing the truth is surprisingly easy.I had thought it would take an act of pained reckoning, like ripping off a strip of duct tape from my skin to reveal the tender, delicate flesh that lies beneath; I thought there would be teeth grinding and blood, that I’d have to steel myself just to walk from my office to the exit door.There was a time when all of this openness would have been unthinkable, when I would have been tempted to dismiss the ring I’ll wear as just jewelry, tempted to slide it off and hide it in my pocket, as if I were a shamed cheater, unfaithful to my lies, keeping up the appearances of a man I never was.

But my years of paranoia feel distant, part of a life that it is hard to believe was ever mine.

The real struggle, it seems, was always in believing myself worthy of Elio, believing that one so wonderful in every way could possibly see in me whatever is necessary to remain, that he would offer up his pure gold to the battered tin of my hand.I never anticipated that someone would want to know me, the real me, and that even when he did, wish to stay.The blind fumbling I’ve done on the way to accepting this idea nearly cost me the whole of it.

I take a deep breath and raise my chin to Giorgio.“They are.”I reach for my wine glass.“It is a delicate matter to anticipate the possible.But what is _im_ possible is to consider is the pain of the alternative.”

“Che cosa?”

I swallow a mouthful and look him straight in the eye.“Morte certa. Una vita senza amore.”

The table booms with noise, breaking apart into smiles and indistinct chatter as all sink back into their own conversations.Annella, who’d been passing behind me, stops to squeeze my arm and kiss Elio on the cheek.I look over at him, his hair swept to the side, cheeks reddened from the cabernet, playful smile running like quicksilver over his lips.When our eyes connect, I open mine wide and puff my cheeks and exhale forcefully, then wipe my forehead heavily with the back of my hand, flicking it at the end.He laughs and cups my cheek.“You survived.”

I grimace.“We’ll see.Still one more day to go.”

“You’ll be fine.”

We had spent the day greeting various relatives of his who had come into town for our ceremony.Mafalda brought in two young girls, her harried apprentices, to assist her with the food, quickly melding the chaos into a finely tuned culinary apparatus.When I had ventured into the kitchen in the afternoon to see if I could help out, I was promptly scolded and sent back through the door.Luckily for them, we all adjourn to the sitting rooms.Annella’s brother positions himself by the fireplace, thundering away about the abuses of the ruling classes, just as he’d done at our dinner during Hanukkah, only this time to Samuel’s sister and her husband, a corporate lawyer.Elio and I sink down next to each other on the sofa, heads flicking back and forth, like we are watching a tennis match being played with hand grenades, the volume and vehemence of the participants increasing as the bottles of wine disappear one by one.Samuel and Annella try to referee, nodding and placating, seeming to work the entire room to pat shoulders and soothe egos and shove hors’d oeuvres into open mouths, but still the arms flail and tongues wag at a furious rate.

Truthfully, I love this.I love the passion and the enthusiasm, the pure zest for life that Elio’s whole family pours into everything they do.They eat avidly and argue emphatically and sing heartily, which is usually how these gatherings end.After the wine has muted the discussion, made everyone maudlin and sentimental, someone hums a strain of a favorite old tune, and it ripples around the room until everyone is raising a glass and swaying to the hearty chorus.

Each time, I sit here in the midst of the chaos and try to conjure an image of such a gathering in my parents’ home.The juxtaposition is staggering.Family gatherings in Connecticut were abject lessons in passive aggression.Loaded silence and oppressive restraint ruled the room as the fake smiles and polite conversation trickled out like dribbles of bitter venom.Meals were served on a timer, promptly cleared when the clock ran down.Questions asked were safe ones, virtually scripted from year to year to cover the same surface material—college classes or health updates or highway construction.Politics and religion were taboo; real thoughts about a topic and genuine interest in one another were strictly avoided.Laughter and song were never invited.

Every holiday used to make me feel as if I were holding my breath, the whole masquerade slowly smothering me under the weight of its repression and distance.I shudder to think of Elio in an environment like that, being scrutinized and judged, the hostility slowly chipping away at his sensitive heart until he could not believe in himself enough to play a simple scale, let alone an original composition.My brain is shouting at me that it could never happen, that Elio is already grown and strong and brilliant, but the mere thought of it is so repulsive that I feel my muscles grow rigid, fingernails biting into my palms, like I’ve been strapped to a chair while a child wanders into the road and stands there aimlessly as a bus approaches from miles away—he cannot see it coming and doesn’t heed my cries, standing all smiles over the center line, but by the time he is crushed and his blood splatters the windshield high above him, he’s been dead for years.

I would never allow anyone to hurt Elio like that, to wound his spirit, to poison him from the inside out.I would die before I would ever let that happen.

Thankfully, I am jarred from my spiral thoughts when Elio’s cousin Jacob brings up the name of some disgraced Italian politician that I only vaguely remember from the newspapers, and the room goes ballistic.Elio and I look at each other wide-eyed for a moment, frozen with alarm.But then I see a flick of a grin in the corner of his mouth, and I bite my cheek hard but can’t help matching it, and in the space of a single breath, we collapse against each other trying desperately to stifle our giggles before the outrage lighting the room turns on us.

He slides closer to me and whispers, “I have an idea.”

My imagination about what exactly that means turns my smile lustful.“Oh, _do_ you?”I lean down to press my mouth to his ear.“Does this involve the hallway closet?” 

I angle back to watch the tips of his ears turn pink.“ _Oliver!_ ”

My eyebrows lift suggestively.“I know you, Perlman.You up for a little danger?”

His lips clamp together and cinch up a bit to the side. _God, I love him_.He grabs my hand and brings it to his face, closing his eyes and running my fingers across his cheek.Then he centers himself.“I think I’ll sleep in the other bedroom tonight.”

“What?”

“We shouldn’t sleep together tonight.”

I bend my leg up on the sofa cushion to look him directly in the face.“What are you talking about?Why not?”

“It’s tradition for the night before, Oliver,” he prods shyly, playing with the hem of my sweater. 

“We aren’t exactly relying on tradition for any of this, though, Elio,” I counter.

“You don’t want us to have bad luck, do you?”

He sighs, and he’s so damn adorable, I have to fight to keep a stern face.“Bad luck?” I poke him in the ribs, dropping my jaw in feigned shock.“ _Bad luck_?What’s bad luck?Never heard of it.”I flick my finger along the underside of his chin.“Why, Elio Perlman, are you superstitious?”

“No,” he drawls, looking up at me through his impossibly long lashes.“No, not really.”He shrugs, blushing.“Just covering all my bases.”

My jaw drops further.“And did you just use a _baseball_ idiom?Dear God, you really _have_ been a prisoner in America too long!”

He shoves my shoulder.“Shut _up_ , you know what I mean!”

I laugh and squeeze his arm, running my fingers slowly up and down the soft fabric of his jacket.“All right, all right.If it matters that much to you, then we’ll do it.”I tuck one of his curls behind his ear.“I’ll miss you, though.”

_That smile_.“Dream about me, then.”

“I always do.”

 

* * *

 

It is not until I’m trudging up the stairs an hour later that I really considered the prospect of not sleeping with him, and I have to beat back an odd feeling of panic. _Get over yourself, Oliver._ I’m being ridiculous.It’s just one night, right?

When I step into the bedroom, the door closes behind me with a hollow smack, and a gloom descends on me.Suddenly, the food I had eaten sits heavy in my stomach and the drinks I’d downed spark a throbbing in my temples.I change into my pajamas and brush my teeth, moving through the routine on a slow autopilot, and when I finally have no choice but to get into bed, I flop around irritably on the mattress, unable to get comfortable, feeling every ache in my muscles and every stitch of fabric itch at my skin.I stare into the darkness because every time I try to shut my eyes, I cannot help but remember the last time I’d been relegated to a bedroom all by myself, the first and only time that Elio and I had deliberately not shared a bed in the years since he had moved to New York.

It was completely inane, the fight we’d had.We fought over dogs and cats.Not _like_ dogs and cats, but _about_ them—which is the better pet.It didn’t matter, of course, that neither of us had ever had a pet in our lives, but once we got on the subject, it became deathly important for some reason that we agree upon which would be the superior companion.

Elio likes cats.“They’re quiet.Complicated,” he’d insisted.“They keep to themselves and only attach to a lucky few humans or other animals that they feel bonded to.I think that’s cool.”

I was somehow mortally offended by that.“What is the matter with you?Cats are _creepy_!They sneak around and ignore everyone.Dogs are more welcoming, up-front…affectionate.They accept everyone, not just a privileged few.How could you even tell if a cat loves you?I’ll tell you—you _can’t_ because it probably _doesn’t_.At least dogs are loyal.”

He’d looked at me like I had three heads.“Since when is being reserved considered ‘creepy’?Just because you can’t read their minds, doesn’t mean they’re plotting your death!Dogs are just sell-outs—they’ll love anything that walks through the door, but a cat makes it worthwhile.A cat is _selective_.It’s an honor to be loved by a cat.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!It’s less an honor to be loved by something because it doesn’t withhold its affection?Cats hide everything!You can’t even tell a cat is sick until it is almost dead!Where’s the honor in _that_?”

“What’s so great about telegraphing everything?How long can an animal survive in the wild if it has no way to conceal its intentions?”

“Who cares??They’re _domesticated_!”

We were shouting at each other at that point.Finally, Elio had thrown up his hands and barked, “That’s it!I am _done_ talking to you!”He’d grabbed the television remote and flopped down on the sofa. 

“Fine!Leave me _alone_!” I roared, stomping into the bedroom and slamming the door.I had ripped the tie off of my neck, balled it up, and threw it in the corner, just to complete the picture of my juvenile idiocy.I slumped on the bed and grabbed a paperback off the nightstand, trying to distract myself from the pounding blood making swishing noises in my ears.I had flipped the pages but ingested nothing, so I’d tossed it aside, stripped down to my boxers and undershirt, and flicked off the light.I could hear the muted sounds of the evening news on the television down the hall.

I was miserable.We’d never really fought, Elio and I. I used to insist that no one could live under the same roof as another human being and never want to kill the other at some point, and anyone who claimed to do so was a liar.But we truly hadn’t raised our voices to one another until then, so I had no routine to fall back on, no process in place for how to handle the awkward feeling of separation, the grating angst.

And seriously, how the hell had we gotten to that point?Dogs and cats? _That_ is what did it for us?Absurd didn’t even begin to cover it.Not family or finances or work problems, the things that normal couples would fight about—oh, no, not us!But why in the hell had something as ludicrous as that mattered so much?I had stared at the ceiling and chewed on the inside of my cheek until the wee hours of the morning before something occurred to me.

Everything he’d said, every feline quirk I had found to be so contemptible?It was me. _I_ was complicated and reserved. _I_ kept my thoughts hidden and watched everything around me, allowing myself to get close to precious few others.The whole fucking time he’d been defending _me_.

Then, I finally realized it, the thing about Elio that I’d found most enthralling: He has a complete lack of artifice.He is who he is, even when he wishes he were different.He plans to tell a lie, and the truth stumbles out; he tries to hide his thoughts, but every one of them shows on his face.I never have to hide around him because everything about him is out in the open.There are no shadows for me to fear, no pits of quicksand that would suddenly appear beneath my feet.At last, there were no expectations for me other than to be who I am.He never wanted anything more than that.

And I had never in my life wanted anything more than I have wanted him.

I had leapt out of bed and strode to the door, ripping it open to find Elio standing directly on the other side, hands on his hips, head lowered, like he was trying to find the courage to knock.His head snapped up, and when our eyes connected, I could see it; I could see that he’d figured it out, too, that he is my perfect opposite, and I am his.His face instantly crumpled, betraying whatever determined resolve he had mustered.“Oliver,” he choked out, before I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him across the threshold and into me, wrapping him up in my arms as tightly as I could, dragging him to the bed so we could tumble as one to the mattress.

Never fighting meant we’d never explored the legend of make-up sex before, and maybe it isn’t always the case, but this with Elio was transformational.My eyes never left his the entire time.That immediate fervor, the intensity of teeth and nails, the ripping of clothing and jostling of limbs, had eased quickly, protracted itself into a relearning, a rediscovery of sensations intensified by the need for reassurance, for affirmation.He had enveloped me entirely, covered me with his body, held me with his hands, filled me with gentle and reverent rolls of his hips.My fingers touched his lips as they moved, mild oaths and whispered sentiments, his name and my name dripping from his tongue until I didn’t even know which was which.

I had felt safe.Loved.

Whole.

 

* * *

  

I’ve been awake since dawn.Not much hope for sleep today.

_The_ day.

I should be cold as the villa’s heat is notoriously glitchy; in the two weeks we’ve been here, I’ve grown accustomed to awakening with a cool tip to my nose and a layer of frost on the inside corners of the window.It never bothers me, though.It is a convenient excuse to burrow further under the quilt, to luxuriate in our own tropical atmosphere that we create throughout the night.Most nights, our pajamas end up damp with sweat and in messy piles at the side of the bed, discarded in favor of reveling in the comfort and feel of one another; flannel and cotton become unnecessary burdens that don’t have the right to keep us from the frisson of wonder that transcends us when we slide from opposite sides to meet in the middle of the mattress and our skin touches.It doesn’t matter how many years we’ve shared the same bed; every night it enchants me.Every time I feel the bedsheet puff as his arms settle around me, feel his legs intertwine with mine, it still sends the same surge of tranquility through me, as if it were the very first time.It is one of the only real sources of peace I get, and knowing that I will end up in that pool of calm is what gets me through the busiest and most aggravating of days.

This morning, Elio is tucked into my right side, lanky limbs sprawled over me, deep susurrations of breath tickling the hair on my chest.I look down at him, face turned up so that his curls skim the broad bridge of his nose, the subtle downward sweep of his almond eyes, the perfect red bloom of his lips.His bare skin is warm and supple, and I cannot resist stroking my hand down the long line of his spine and settling my fingertips into the curve of his hipbone.

An unavoidable smile tips the corners of my lips, and I roll my eyes to the ceiling, tightening my arm around his back.Yesterday, despite Elio’s insistence that we sleep in separate beds, a couple of hours after I retired, I heard the door click open.I didn’t even look, just smiled into the pillow as I felt the sheet shift and the mattress dip, sighing involuntarily with relief as the warm arms wrapped around my waist.

“What about bad luck?” I had murmured.

A soft snort.“I guess you and I can make our own luck.”

That was all I had needed to burrow deep and sleep like the dead until the first light from the window hit my eyes.

“What time is it?”His voice is a garbled rasp.

“Still early.Go back to sleep.”I massage slow circles over his hip, and he pushes back slightly into my touch.

“ ’S nice.”

He’s quiet for a long time, and I am amazed to feel myself drifting off again.I don’t know if minutes or hours pass before I’m jarred by the muted thud of the villa’s front door slamming shut, and Elio sucks in a sharp breath and groans.I chuckle softly, “I guess preparations begin.”

I feel him turn his face into my armpit.“Can they begin quietly, maybe?”

My hand wanders up and pinches the ticklish spot on his trapezius muscle, making his neck crick down.A short yelp vibrates the mattress.“Hush.We did bring this on ourselves, you know.”

“You’re the one who asked the question,” he huffs, breath hot against my skin.

I cluck my tongue, “Maybe next time you’ll think harder before agreeing to my wild schemes.”I bend my neck to bury my nose in his hair.“Not too late to back out, though.”I grab a few strands and tug.

His head pops up, curls so long that they dust his cheekbones untamed.His lips are compressed as he tries miserably not to smile.“Yeah?”

“Sure.”I nod solemnly.“As long as you’re prepared for the consequences.”

“Too many crates of prosecco in the basement?”

“You wish.”

I dive under the sheet and attack his rib cage with wild fingers, trying to pin him down while he wriggles and squirms, gasping for breath as airless howls contort his face.He swats at my hands but cannot grab my wrists, so he bends his body like a noodle and slithers off the bed to take refuge in the bathroom.

“You can run, but you can’t hide, Perlman,” I call to him.I slide to the end of the bed and put my feet on the floor, leaning back on the heels of my hands.

I hear the lock click on the bathroom door.

“Time is on my side.”

“The toilet’s on mine,” is his reply.

I stuff the corner of the sheet into my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.“You better not be sticking out your tongue at me.”

“And what if I am?”I can see the shadow of his toes beneath the door.

I stay silent.Eventually the knob clicks and half of his face appears around the edge of the frame.His eyebrow inches up.

“It’d be such a _waste_ ,” I finally answer, pitching my voice low and raking him with a blatant and lascivious stare.I hear his giggle echo against the bathroom tiles as he slips back inside, pushing the door all the way open.I hear the water run and the swish of his toothbrush.Then, I detect a low hum that cuts through the hiss of the rest.

It’s Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and groan.

There’s a splatter as he spits into the sink, then a pause.He leans through the doorway again.“Want me to stop?”

My smile grows so broad that it tugs at my cheeks with a near painful pinch.“You’ll kill me if you stop.”

 

* * *

 

Dinner is a quiet and informal affair while the house prepares itself for the evening.Our ceremony will be a relatively brief exchange before midnight, and most of the Perlmans’ extended family will attend as much for the revelry for the New Year as for us.That doesn’t bother me in the slightest.Given how all of this could have been received, I’m thrilled that they want to show up at all.

After we eat, we meet our officiant.The man who would preside is an old friend of Samuel, a man the professor had known from his youth in the town where he grew up.Samuel reveres him, describing him to us as the wisest man he’s ever known.His name is Arthur Goldman, himself a professor emeritus of history and literature who had been a refugee fleeing Germany before the second world war.He’s a short, slight man who now stands in the study gripping the rim of his battered hat as if he were lost, an air of nervous energy about him.

Elio grins when he sees him, and the man holds open his arms to embrace him.“Elio!Look at you, my boy!How you have grown, and into such a handsome young man!”

Elio blushes with delight, looking immediately like a little kid, and bends into the man's arms.“Hello, sir.”

“I haven’t seen you since before you were the age of bar mitzvah.”They chat briefly about Elio’s studies and his professional activities. The old man beams like a proud grandfather while Elio describes the sonata he’s working on.

Finally, Elio steps back and motions to me.“This is Oliver.”

I slide forward, suddenly a bit nervous.“It is an honor, sir.”

When he approaches me and takes my offered hand, I can see how wrong my initial impression of him had been.His soft, somewhat doddering appearance is quickly belied by his dark eyes, keen and piercing; one sweep of them up and down my body, and I feel as if he’s just read all of my secrets.When he speaks, his mellow voice radiates the wisdom gained from eighty years of study, reflection, and experience.“The honor is mine.If the Perlmans have welcomed you into their family, you are undoubtedly a special man.”

I feel oddly exposed.“I thank you, but I suspect that is more a tribute to them than to me.”There is something about him that makes me want to confess.“They all make me want to be a better person, yet they still seem to accept me as I am.”

He laughs warmly and pats my arm, looking past me to Elio.“I think you’ve chosen well, my boy.”

Elio steps forward and slides his arm around my waist, and without thinking, I lean into him.“I think so, too, sir.”I look over at his face, his calm smile, exuding a comfort and confidence I can only envy.It is unbelievably attractive, and I have to blink and direct my eyes to my shoes as an unexpected wave of desire overwhelms me.It humbles me further, being reminded again of Elio’s strength and independence, knowing he could weather the world quite well on his own but chooses to take me with him, to shelter me from every storm in the security of his embrace.

I think of the first time I saw Elio perform his own concert, one for a paying public in a grand auditorium.I’d left him to his preparations in the green room and found my seat outside, stomach roiling with nerves as if it were I who was going to have to address the masses and somehow perform at my best.I was used to a lecture hall, but something on this scale would have reduced me to a puddle of incoherent perspiration.I knew how long and how hard he had worked, and I wanted his success like I’d never wanted anything else before.

I had crushed the slick pages of the program in my hands, just to have something to hold onto to keep me from embarrassing myself when Elio finally entered in his concert black. _Elegance_.It is the only word that fit him.He was the absolute embodiment of it, addressing the audience with a warm confidence, his voice rich and hypnotic, explaining the inspiration behind various pieces, the originals and the classical mash-ups, the orchestral works he’d transcribed and arranged, the artistic goals that he’d sought to achieve.He was friendly and self-deprecating, and the packed house was thoroughly smitten; the crowd of seasoned concert-goers, usually too full of ennui to muster much more than a stoic politeness, laughed and murmured and rattled my chest with their applause.He made every single person feel as if he were playing just for him, the haunting and vivacious melodies that brought to life a private invitation to all to open their hearts to a life that they perhaps had dreamed of when they thought that dreams were still possible.

Had his voice always been that deep, that sonorous?Had he always had the ability to captivate a room with a sweep of his arm and a toss of his head?I thought I’d known him in every way, but there’s no way to see a flower wholly whose petals constantly unfold.Another facet, another miracle.Another reason that if I were to live a thousand lifetimes, I’d never be able to reach the bottom of my love for him.

Finally, Dr. Goldman claps his hands together.“It is settled.Go, now, gentlemen.I must make my preparations, and I am sure you’ve much to do as well.I will see you both when it is time.”

“Of course.”We move toward the door, but I stop Elio by laying a hand on his wrist.I turn back to the old man.“Dr. Goldman, may I ask you a question?”

“Ah.”He smiles slightly.“You want to know why.”

“Yes.I mean, I understand why you’d want to honor the Perlmans, of course.But why do _you_ do this?”

His dark eyes spark, as if he were just waiting for me to ask the question, like he’d read it in my mind as he’d examined me.He grips his hands together in front of him and is silent for a few moments.His head tilts to the right, and when he finally speaks, his voice is slightly haunted.“I understand what it is to be persecuted, Oliver, to be carefully selected from a group of peers and found to be unfit for reasons I could neither correct nor apologize for sincerely.I never want another boy to suffer the same, for _any_ reason.”

I nodded sharply, my throat tight, and let Elio lead me from the room.

 

* * *

 

 

By roughly half-past ten, people have started to arrive.Elio and I go to separate rooms to get dressed, just so we’re not walking over top of one another.I’ve selected a charcoal suit with cerulean tie and pocket square, a color Elio loves.As I am unzipping the garment bag, there’s a quiet knock on the door.

I turn with a sharp, dirty remark on the tip of my tongue, and I quickly have to swallow it down when I see who is standing at the entrance.

“Annella!”

She smiles and slides in the door, closing it quietly behind her.She holds a small bag in her hand.

“I wanted to see if you were doing all right, Oliver.To see if you needed help with anything.”

I pat the front of the suit.“Do I have the square folded properly?”

She comes over and makes a couple of tugs at the silken fabric, then sighs and looks up at me.“Mi dispiace.I’m sorry, Oliver.”

I blink at her.“About what?”

“All of this, you…well, you have no one here, no family, I mean.”She winces, eyes saddened and kind.

I’d thought of this.The love and the revelry, the openness and the joy that this place has always shown to me, that these people have always inspired in me, feel very far removed from the manner in which my blood relatives would conduct themselves.“This is not something about which any of them would approve,” I tell her quietly, suddenly embarrassed that this is the stock from which I have come, those who are stale and cold and contentious.“It is for the best.”

She smiles at me with her warm eyes, settling the feathers of my hair and patting my cheek, just as I’ve seen her do to Elio a hundred times.“I assumed this to be so.But that doesn’t mean that it is any easier to take, yes?And I am sorry that they will miss out.”

“They would not see it as a loss,” I smile ruefully.

“It is, though, it is!They have missed out on what a fine young man you are, and that is a burden that _they_ must carry, not you.”She squeezes my shoulder.“Do you understand me, Oliver?”

“Yes.”I bend and give her a tight hug, and when I stand up, I grab her free hand in both of mine.“ _Grazie_ , Annella.For everything.”

She squeezes my hand, then holds up the bag in her other grip.“I have something for you.”

My eyebrows shoot up.“Oh?Just for me?”

Her smile turns sly.“In un certo senso.It’s a bit of good luck for tonight.”She winks at me and slips back out of the door, closing it softly behind her.

I fish in the bag and pull out a small bundle of fabric: bright red boxer briefs.I grin, remembering the Italian New Year’s tradition.Abruptly, my face turns a similar shade of scarlet when it occurs to me that it might not be about that at all.

There’s a note folded inside: _Many happy returns_.

 

* * *

 

The rooms of the house are sparsely decorated with the typical greenery for this time of year.The solarium in the back of the house is where we will be set up, and it’s simple draping of stringed lights around the lines of its ceiling, accentuated by the dusting edges of fresh snowfall, provide the perfect warm glow over all. 

The rumblings of chatter and laughter float up the stairs as I straighten my tie in the mirror and pick non-existent lint from my jacket.I stare into my own eyes and feel the flutter in my stomach, the sweat in the fringes of my hair.I try to reconcile what I see with the timid, earnest boy who had sat in the woods and watched the water flow with ease, praying for the gift of a mindless life, one held at arm's length from gravity itself.I hadn’t known then that gravity is bendable and that time itself is relative to it.I couldn’t have guessed that the higher one goes, the more unfettered he is by the pull of gravity, that the faster the clock ticks.Or that, conversely, when one is closer to the source, entwined and involved with its gravity, time slows.Youth expands.Thus, it is the connection itself that offers the longer breath of life.

I finger the platinum band in my pocket.Of all the lessons I’ve learned over the last seven years, this is the one that I can say with certainty to be true.

I make my way downstairs and greet a few people, shaking hands and accepting their words of congratulations.All the while, I scan the rooms until I see him, tall and breathtaking in his light grey suit and emerald tie, chatting with an older lady who gesticulates wildly as she speaks.When he sees me, his eyes sweep up and down pointedly, and before he returns his attention to the woman, he shoots me an intense look that forces all the air from my lungs and makes me grateful for the buffer of the guests, lest I march over to him and completely scandalize myself right here in the middle of the living room.

Any nervousness I’d entertained earlier vanishes for good.

Soon I hear the tinkling of metal on glass as Samuel rings a small bell that had been perched on the mantle.“It’s about that time, everyone!Top up and join us in the solarium, won’t you?”

The seating in there is sparse and informal, left empty for elder relatives.Most cradle their glasses and fill in the edges of the room, forming a crescent around where Dr. Goldman waits placidly for us at one end.Elio and I emerge from opposite sides of the crowd to stand in front of him.We reach out at the same time to grab the other’s hand.

_This is it_.

When everyone seems settled and a quiet descends, Arthur glances at both of us and nods to the group, addressing his remarks to the entire room.“Welcome!On this traditional night of revelry to mark the dawning of a new year, we have also chosen to share in the celebration of the joining of these two young people, Elio and Oliver.

“I believe it is Heraclitus who claims the soul is boundless, its confines undetectable because they do not exist.”I don’t know why I am surprised that this man has so thoroughly studied his subjects, and therefore, mine.I bend my head and give Elio a sidelong glance that wobbles between amazement and glee.He bites his bottom lip to keep from giggling.“Indeed, self is a construction that is never completed, but one that finds solid footing when we meet another who supports that foundation, who gives richer meaning and greater motivation to our every day.When love is offered, the fostering of self has a sacred purpose.‘I’ intertwines with ‘we,’ and dimension is added to our souls in ways that could never become evident if alone.The identity of opposites is not what endures, but their interchangeable nature, their transformational equivalence.

“But if Heraclitus considers the soul to be of fire, so would it be death for it to follow the path of water, yet it is from water that the soul is given life.Indeed, it is not always the nature of the gift that matters, but the impact that it has on the recipient.Consider the effect of Love:Love is a concept that defies our usual acts of scholarship.It is an unsolvable conundrum:it exists undeniably, yet it can’t be seen with the naked eye; it lives and it dies, yet it cannot be killed with a conscious act.It lives within us, governs our actions, but continues on after we are dust.When it finds us, we are powerless to resist, but despite its tyranny, it is the greatest of all gifts which nature can bestow upon us.Thus, we must celebrate it and those souls who are lucky enough to share it in concert.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Samuel lean over to kiss his wife on the temple.She pulls his arm tighter around her waist.

Arthur folds his hands.“Now, the boys have prepared some words for one another.Elio?”

Elio turns fully toward me and grasps my other hand as well, resolutely keeping his eyes there.I see small beads of sweat above his upper lip, and I want to pull him over and kiss every one of them away.He swallows thickly, and I watch his throat work to find his voice.Then, he finally looks up at me. “My father has always spoken of _il_ _traviamento—_ the different turn in life, the unexpected path, which some fear so intensely that they reject _all_ turns and become stuck in a life that was wrong from the start.”He takes a long, slow inhale.“See, I never…I never got that the other _via_ isn’t always a detour; it’s not always a backslide.The other _via_ can sometimes be the right way, the _only_ way.And whatever way has brought me to this point, that is the only way that I will ever need.”He pulls the ring from his pocket with shaky fingers and slides it on my finger.It is warm, carrying the heat of his body directly into mine.He smiles, bottom lip tremulous, viridescent eyes large and wet and mesmerizing.

“Thank you, Elio.”Mr. Goldman clears his throat.“Oliver?”

“You are the place where dreams and reality meet.”My mind stutters.I have no idea from where those words have come.I’d planned my vows carefully, but what I thought I would say right now flies away like a fluff of seeds from a dandelion.It’s like I never really understood my own feelings until this moment, until I could stand with his hands in mine in a circle of loved ones under the soft shimmer of hundreds of twinkling lights.When it comes again, my voice sounds small and awed, carried by the wave of epiphany from lungs that have forgotten how to draw breath.“I’ve never known how to live without you.My life before you was…detached.False.It was _full_ …full of activity, full of preoccupations, but empty of anything that _touched_ me, like I had been a sleepwalker.A zombie.I encountered lots of people, watched them come and go, leave their trails behind…But none of them ever _knew_ _me_ …but that’s because they couldn’t—no one could—because I…I hadn’t met _you_ …so there was nothing inside for them to see…only fragments—broken, _dying_ fragments.Nothing whole.”I place his ring and squeeze his hands tight.“Until now.”

Arthur places a gentle palm on each of our shoulders.“Elio and Oliver, we acknowledge your solemn commitment to one another, a marriage of body and soul, of heart and mind.All the blessings of love upon you for the rest of your days.”

Elio’s face is drawn tight, fighting to keep composure but seconds from crumpling under the weight of the tears he’s kept to the corners of his eyes.At last, I had found that final bit of strength to surrender to him completely.It was the only secret I’d had from him, but now, he knows the scope of what my very first trip to Italy meant for me and what would have happened if I’d never boarded that plane.He _knows_.

Then, somewhere in the back of the room, Elio’s cousin Jacob whoops, and the room ripples with laughter and applause.It breaks the spell, and we collide.I grab at his jaw with both hands and pull his face to mine.I kiss him like I had when he got accepted to Juilliard on the spot.I kiss him like I had when he took three trains and a taxi just to attend my book signing after being on tour for two straight weeks.I kiss him like I had when he first crossed the threshold of our apartment in New York.I kiss him like I had in Rome.

I kiss him like I never had before. 

The chiming of the clock cuts through the din.“Buon anno!Buon anno, everyone!”Samuel calls.There follows a sequence of glasses clinking in a sparkling rhythm around us.

Through the windows of the solarium appears the sparkle of distant fireworks, likely from Crema.I hold Elio around the waist, his back flush with my chest, and we turn to watch the display.His head leans back to rest on my shoulder, and I angle my neck forward to take every breath through the filter of his hair.

When I was a kid, I used to take star trail pictures.I would sit in the backyard with my father’s expensive camera on a pillow, diligently keeping the aperture open to let the light in for an extended period because only then could it tell a story, instead of just giving a dark and unrevealing snapshot; only then could the true art be seen, the circular streaks of light that proved that all of us were in motion, that our planet and the rest of the galaxy could work together to make something so simple yet stunning beyond words.As the fireworks bloom over our heads, the streams of light remind me of those images, like they were merely promissory notes, assuring me that one day, if I just kept the aperture open long enough, my life could be like that, too.

My husband turns his head and murmurs in my ear, “I love you, Elio.”

What is life without this?At last, mine is a promise fulfilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Flatliners” starring Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland came out in August of 1990.
> 
> Oliver hints at his desperate nature of his thoughts before going to Italy in chapter four of “The Long Road.”
> 
> I have had such wretched difficulty writing this chapter, and part of me wonders if it is because I wanted to delay its end because I have grown to love these characters so much. I want to live in this world where they are one! Fair warning: I don’t think I can resist adding a very short and very fluffy epilogue!
> 
> Finally, I must confess this: you are all I have. No one in my regular life knows I write these stories; no one would understand or care, so I have no interaction at all beyond this site—no one with whom to share and no one from whom to learn or get feedback but you. Plus, I’ve never been to Tumblr or other such blogging sites; I have no social media upon which to advertise or connect, so the only way my stories are read is when I am lucky enough to have readers like you stumble upon them and be willing to give them some of your attention. Therefore, with extreme and weepy sincerity, I have to say THANK YOU! Thank you for being here, for caring enough to read and to leave some comments, and perhaps, for sharing the experience with others who might enjoy it, too. You are the best!


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prepare yourself: tons of fluff within!  
> Because there's no such thing as too much happiness where Elio and Oliver are concerned!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need a bit of a boost, if you've had a bad day, this one's for you!

I tilt my hand so it catches the light, the lilt of a sunbeam from the window.The sight makes my breath catch. _I didn’t dream it._ Part of me can’t quite believe what I’m seeing, but part of me has seen it all along, a ghost of a shadow where the ring was always meant to go.Now, I wouldn’t recognize my own hand without it.

A strong, wiry arm raises across my chest and entwines our fingers so the pair of bands shines brightly.

I feel the press of a soft kiss to the nape of my neck, then a sleepy murmur in my ear.“‘The Cosmos was not made by gods but always was and is eternal fire.’”

I pull his arm tight around me and push back against his warmth.“You’ll never fail to seduce me with philosophy, you know.”

“I know.”A purr.

“Is it tiring to be this brilliant all the time?”

“If it means I’m seducing you?Never.”A series of open-mouthed kisses along my throat leaves me covered in gooseflesh.

“It was my idea, though.”

“What was?”

“To hold onto the stars.”

The mattress shifts as he throws his leg around my hip and sits above me on my thighs.His eyes are dark and glowing. _He remembers_.“Stars are fusion reactors, you know.”

“I know.So?”

“So I find it interesting that it’s only through the melding of elements that we get the heat and the light that we live by.”His eyebrows ripple.

I reach for his hips and massage the warm flesh.“Yes.Yes, it most certainly is.”

His lips curl upward.“In fact, some claim that our universe has been formed from the remnants of another dying universe—a coalescence of sorts that has formed our reality.And this would mean that there’s a lifecycle to the entire cosmos, that it breathes like lungs on a scale of time humans could not begin to comprehend.”His palms lay flat on my chest, fingertips working tufts of hair in rhythmic circles.

“A coalescence?”I bite my bottom lip.“Oh, so what you’re really saying is that the whole of our universe is _music_.That would make each lifecycle just a single movement in an endless symphony.”

He goes still and stares down at me, face serious, eyes searching both of mine. _Did you really think I could forget that, Elio?_ Suddenly, The Smile transforms his face, making my blood surge and my heart thud so hard that he has to be able to hear it.I close my eyes and raise my fingers to press into his lips, his cheeks, his jaw.He chuckles low in his throat.“What are you doing?”

“You’ve no idea what that smile does to me, do you?” I murmur, feeling my way across his cheekbones.“I want to see all of it, in every way.”

A few moments pass before he asks, “Well?”

I hum quietly, then pop my eyes open.“Fucking _gorgeous_.”

He laughs, stretching down like a cat to run his hands over my shoulders and down the length of my torso.

“Oliver, I’m happy.”He gazes at me in wonderment. _How are you mine?_

I give his waist a playful squeeze and nudge up with my hips.“You’re just horny.”

“No.”He bends down until his nose nearly touches mine.“ _Happy_.”

I raise my palm to his cheek, and he leans into it, letting a long blink close his eyes.“Me, too,” I whisper, and he falls against my mouth, licks into it deliciously, marks my tongue with the taste of strawberries and dry Riesling, hands tucking into my hair and pulling tight.His stubble scrapes against my chin, brands me.Owns me.

He pulls back just a bit, still so close his words move my lips as he speaks.“Ok, so maybe a little bit horny.”

Just before I roll us, just before I ravage his long neck and his muscled thighs and his lavish bum, a giggle bubbles up in my throat, and I realize that finally it comes from a light heart, absent of doubt, absent of fear.Full of exhilaration and love.Full of bliss.

_My universe._ A beauty and complexity beyond my capacity to comprehend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference to the keeping the stars was contained in Oliver's proposal in chapter 1 of this piece; the coalescence and the music around us were suggested by Elio in chapter 3 of "The Long Road."
> 
> Thank you again for being such clever, kind, and uplifting readers. All of your comments are treasured!
> 
> I hope you'll be willing to come back for more of these two; I can't seem to let them go!


End file.
